Secrets of a Champion: How Phil Mickelson Win a Major at 50

Each time he failed, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, abstracted himself from the world, and reset his mind in Zen mode. He kept his gaze hyper-focused on the target, never losing his balance. Not even when the crowd behind him, on his way to the 18th green, would yell at him to consummate the victory in the PGA Championship. He had already received some decisive advice from Tim, his brother and caddy: “If you are going to win this, you will have to take committed swings.” Finally, against all odds, Phil Mickelson he rewrote golf history by establishing himself Sunday as the oldest player to win a major tournament. A milestone on the brink of 51 years – he will meet them on June 16 – that places him even higher in the Olympus of this sport.

Two weeks ago, the San Diego southpaw had written a warning tweet: “I have failed many times in my life and in my career. But instead of feeling defeated countless times, I’ve used it as fuel to push myself to work harder. So join me in accepting our failures. Let’s use them to motivate ourselves to work even harder. ” It was not a message released just because on the networks, but a mother idea that redefined his career and gave new life to his fabulous career on the PGA Tour.

The question is how Mickelson managed to reinvent himself and stomp stronger than established golfers in their 20s and 40s today. Everything starts from a natural condition: the passion that is inside him and his motivation to continue competing, in a stage in which he could rest on his laurels with 44 titles on the top tour, five major titles -before winning this PGA Championship-, a consolidated family, induction into the Hall of Fame in 2012 and $ 95 million only in official awards.

Old Phil happens to be a foolproof enthusiast and does not accept to leave the Big circus. For him it is not time yet to become a commentator or navigate without great pressure on the Champions Tour, the veteran’s tour. “Passion is what distinguishes it”, Michael Lardon, a San Diego sports psychologist who worked with him during his 2013 British Open win, tells Golf Digest. “He always surprised me when he spent time with Phil. Today he is as excited as Will Zalatoris, the 24-year-old who finished 2nd in the last Masters. Lardon adds: “And it’s as much in golf as in life. If you talk to him about anything unrelated to golf, like politics, neuroscience, or astrology, he’s still very excited, almost childishly. That’s part of his genius. “

Congratulated after the triumph in South Carolina by Tiger Woods (“Truly inspiring!” Wrote the former No. 1), another of his secrets to give this great impact is his reliability and validity with the putter, the first stick that usually betrays when many leaves of the almanac have already flown. The loss of fine motor control of the arms, which affects the swing of the club, begins to add to the deterioration of vision, which impairs the reading of the greens. Mickelson still stands on both counts and exhibits two other great attributes: quickly forget bad putts -A karma that usually extends the nightmare to the following holes- and at his age he is encouraged to maintain a normal grip on the stick, none of those broom-putts that are trending among the over 40s. When the ball rests just feet from the flag, Lefty can still feel confident.

The mental work is preponderant and Mickelson also took care to improve in this matter. “I am trying to use my mind like a muscle and expand it. As I get older, it becomes more difficult for me to maintain a sharp focus, a good view and see the shot, ”he commented during the last appointment. Nothing more complicated than to let go of noisy external stimuli, like that walk to the green on the 18th to finish the tournament, with the fans waving in the rearview mirror. However, the Californian showed himself to the crowd with a meditative composure, regulating his breath and psyched himself on those final putts that would secure him the title. As encapsulated in its only goal.

“Golf is very difficult because the mind is constantly flooded with processes and challenges that make concentration difficult. If you add an important championship to it, it’s brutal, ”sports psychologist Bhrett McCabe, who works with several professionals on the PGA Tour, explains to Golf Digest.

The other key point is related to food. Just by watching him play, dressed in clothes that are tighter to the body, the physical transformation that he has been carving in recent years is evident. But no magic formulas: everything entailed a sacrifice that, logically, it must maintain if it intends to remain competitive. Being an ally of the balance has its price.

“I was neither educated nor aware, or else I did not want to know the things that I put in my body: if it was a diet drink and how toxic it was, or the data of the amount of sugar and how much inflammation it could cause me. I closed my eyes to all those things ”, acknowledges the great hero of Sunday in Kiawah Island. His equation is simple: Now eat less of everything and better overall – a good rule of thumb for anyone looking to lose weight. “It was a blessing because I feel healthier, I don’t feel bloated and I wake up feeling good. It’s a worthwhile sacrifice ”.

Specifically, Mickelson structures his diet around periodic fasts, with the goal of restoring his immune system, what he calls “a hard reset.” The weekly diet that works for you is: a day and a half of fasting to cleanse and detoxify your body and restore it, plus five and a half days of healthier nutrition, based on fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Already in July 2019 he amazed on the networks by showing himself with a more molded figure. Then, he explained that his fasts consisted of the intake of water and an energy coffee that preserves the natural antioxidants. Along these lines, obsessive about each project he tackles, he developed together with the famous coach Dave Phillips the product “Coffee for Wellness”, which bears the logo of his famous frog leap that he took when he won the 2004 Masters .

To his food discipline he added yoga, long walks and more hours of training with the machines, which progressively allowed him to reduce that physique that looked increasingly wide and with loss of muscle. “I work harder physically to practice as long as I want. I spend more hours in the gym, I eat well, I practice a lot… there is no reason why afterwards I cannot put it all into the 18 holes ”, explains Mickelson, who brought this new energy to the field: on Sunday, in the 16th he hit a 366-yard bombshell, the longest on that hole of all tournament participants. To achieve greater distances, he deepened in exercises of elasticity of his limbs and adapted new materials for his clubs, an essential help that comes from the hand of technology.

On Monday, Mickelson awoke to the news of a jump from 115th to 32nd in the world rankings. A surprising reality, although not so much: he is the same golf star who won his first tournament on the PGA Tour in 1991 and who, 30 years later, gave a great impact to confirm that he wants to continue generating noise among the best.