Phil Mickelson started his week with a 64 at the Wells Fargo Championship to take a two-shot lead, stirring talk that he might become the eighth player to win a PGA Tour event after turning 50.
A second-round 75 quieted such talk pretty quickly. Weekend rounds of 76-76 guaranteed he wouldn’t join that exclusive group.
Mickelson spoke of renewed ability to stay focused after his opening round.
“I’m just present on each shot,” he said Thursday. “I’ve been doing some like, you know, some mental exercises and so forth just to try to get my focus to elongate over five hours and so forth. That’s been a real struggle for me the last few years because physically, there’s nothing physically holding me back from playing at a high level, but you cannot make mistakes at this level.”
Those mistakes were evident Friday, Saturday and Sunday, when Mickelson had just six birdies over three days while posting 10 bogeys and five double bogeys.
Wells Fargo Championship: Leaderboard | Photos
After his round Friday, Lefty offered a specific example of how his mental game needs to sharpen.
“Kind of an example of what I’ve been talking about is like on 17, we’re standing over the ball and I’m changing my mind and I’m changing the shot, moving the clubhead a little bit and it just. … instead of backing away and kind of refocusing, I just kind of hit it and I’m not really kind of aware of what I’m doing. So I’ve got to fix that and work on it.”
Mickelson is not in the field for next week’s AT&T Byron Nelson, but he’s among the 15 past winners of the PGA Championship headed to Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina in two weeks.
The week after the PGA Championship is the Senior PGA Championship, but when asked, Mickelson said he hadn’t given thought about entering that event.
A winner of 44 PGA Tour titles, including five majors, Mickelson’s best result this season was a tie for 21st in the Masters. He has not won since the 2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.