Phil Mickelson
Lights, camera, action! Hugh Grant as Phil Mickelson. Imagine this line flashing as you enter a movie hall. It feels ethereal, right? Well, even though it might be a hard plot to paint for many of us, Phil Mickelson, for one, has thought through “The Making of a Phil Movie” quite elaborately.
From having decided that Hugh Grant is the best fit for playing him in his life’s screenplay to deciding on resilience as the perfect theme to communicate the many failures and missteps that laid the foundation stones of his unique journey (one where his first major came long after he won the lifetime PGA Tour membership), Mickelson’s dream is only short of execution. Something that might change shortly after seeing the famous pro’s dedication to such execution.
Talking about one aspect of his life without which his movie would be incomplete, Mickelson said in the LIV Golf podcast, Fairway to Heaven, “I think resilience is the thing that mostly everybody has to go through especially myself. I’ve had a lot of failures, a lot of missteps. I was 33 before I won a major and I had been out on tour… I was a lifetime member of the tour. So the resilience of coming close and falling short then using failure as a motivator to work harder to come through and do it, was a big thing for me.”
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After all, it was this resilience that led to Mickelson’s six major wins. After a winless drought in 2003 where he dropped as low as 120th, 2004 became the year when his resilience fetched the now-53-year-old sensation to win his first major: the 2004 Masters Tournament, where he surpassed Ernie Els with just one stroke to lift off the unwanted title of the ‘Best player never to win a Major.’
It was this resilience that backed up his initial major win with five other such glorious triumphs, the latest of which came at the 2021 PGA Championship making him the oldest major winner. But was Mickelson alone in all his resilience-filled accomplishments?
Who were the supporting characters in the story of Phil Mickelson’s life?
While Phil Mickelson remains certain that only the “handsome” Hugh Grant can play his role in a biopic, he is not shy about admitting the contributions of many great instructors he had on his journey. After all, the six-time major champ has had the opportunity to be instructed by some of the golf world’s best, including Rick Smith, Butch Harmon, Andrew Getson, and (most notably) Dave Pelz.
While detailing his life’s story’s plotline, Mickelson made sure to highlight Pelz’s unforgettable role in helping him with his bunker shots, thanks to the renowned instructor’s infusion of scientific flair into the game. His help made Mickelson practice his “10-yard bunker shots” in such a way that they went somewhere from 8 to 13 yards, to almost 3 feet. Mickelson summed up his dreamy plotline with a much-needed lesson: “Resilience is one of the things I probably want you know about my career but I needed help to get there.”
As the interviewer rightly remarked, “It takes a village for a success story,” it remains to be seen whether one such village will soon come together to skillfully convey Mickelson’s life story on screen or not. What is your take?
