Phil Mickelson could have been next Arnold Palmer. He chose another route

OAKMONT, Pa. — There was Phil, standing on the back tee on 7 on Thursday, high on a hill, about as far from the clubhouse as a fella could be. No fans back there, just three British Open winners and their caddies and a couple of marshals. The day was hot and the round was slow and the buzz factor was zero. The man with six career majors was four over par for the 15 holes he had played. All that was left was (rounding up) a 500-yard par-4, a 290-yard par-3, a walk on a bridge over an oblivious turnpike, No. 9 to the clubhouse, the rest of his life. Phil Mickelson turns 55 on Monday.

Like Phil Mickelson, Arnold Palmer played in a U.S. Open at Oakmont as a virile man in his 50s. For Arnold, that was in 1983, at age 52. He was the reigning U.S. Senior Open champion. He made the cut in all four majors in ’83. He was the most popular figure in the game. Even Tom Watson, at the height of his playing powers then, and Jack Nicklaus, with the 17 major titles he had then, would acknowledge that.

In the sports sections of American newspapers, Seve Ballesteros, back then, was the “Arnold Palmer of Europe.” When Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship at age 50 at Kiawah Island in 2021, it was all teed up for him, to be Arnold II. Do you remember the crowds that engulfed him? He had, by dint of his golf, declared an end to the pandemic. You could breathe again. You could take your mask and trash it.

That May win at the Ocean Course got Phil a five-year exemption in the U.S. Open. It covered the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the public course Mickelson played hundreds of times as a kid. (Jon Rahm won; Phil had a T61 finish.) Also ’22 (MC), ’23 (MC), ’24 (MC) . . . and ’25.

Here we are.

We shall see.

Golf was never going to have a second Arnold. But at 50, Phil Mickelson, with his raised thumbs and marathon autograph sessions and enduring game, was the closest thing the game had to the man.

It didn’t happen. Phil went LIV and that changed everything. He took the PIF money and thereby helped open a door to LIV Golf for Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Cam Smith and others. Phil helped make LIV legit. Along the way, he got himself exiled from the tour he came up on, the tour Arnold did so much to make. The PGA Tour has been weaker for it.

And there he was on the 7th tee, about a mile from the clubhouse, grinding it out. If this is his last U.S. Open, he doesn’t want it to wrap up on a Friday night. Four over through 15 holes. Not terrible.

Will he ever wear another Ryder Cup uniform? Will he ever be an honorary starter at Augusta National? Will he be invited to Jay Monahan’s retirement party?

Time, as it always does, will tell.

DeChambeau said the other day that only one person has gone deep with him about how to build a YouTube Channel — Phil, of course. Mickelson, in his mid-50s, is not looking back. He made his first fortune playing the PGA Tour and having equipment deals with Yonex and Titleist and Callaway and Workday. He made his second fortune with his LIV contract. If there’s a third fortune in his future, YouTube will figure in it.

Arnold’s stock-in-trade was the one-on-one experience. His preferred payment was cash-on-the-barrelhead. Mickelson’s instinct is more entrepreneurial. Arnold was the ultimate Establishment figure in golf. There was a certain recklessness to his golf that was hugely endearing, as there has always been for Phil. But off the course, he was as blue blazer (and sometimes green) as could be. Phil is not.

In golf, you’re either an insider or an outsider. When Phil went LIV, he made himself an outsider. He seems to be happy there. But the pro-member at Seminole, the ultimate Establishment tournament, has not had LIV players in it. The Masters is finding ways to live with LIV, it is certainly not embracing it. The USGA, the same. NBC Sports (Arnold’s longtime TV partner) and CBS Sports, both as mainstream as mainstream could be, have distanced themselves from LIV Golf. It’s no wonder Mickelson is asking DeChambeau about the high art of being a YouTube sensation.

Lucas Glover was in the group ahead of Mickelson, Thursday at Oakmont. One of Mickelson’s six runner-up U.S. Open finishes came when Glover won at Bethpage in 2009. Mike Davis, the former USGA CEO and a son of Western Pennsylvania, has been all over Oakmont this week. It was Davis who Mickelson fussed with on Sunday at the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion over course set-up, when Mickelson had another of his U.S. Open second-place finishes. Scott O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman as the CEO of LIV Golf in January, met with Mike Whan, the CEO of the USGA, in the Oakmont clubhouse this week. Norman would not have been able to get LIV off the ground without Mickelson, but LIV Golf would not exist without Norman’s compulsive desire to make it happen. Phil’s tentacles are everywhere in this game.

None of that mattered on Thursday afternoon, as Mickelson and Brian Harman and Cam Smith made their way around the Oakmont course. Phil did some maintenance work while waiting on 1 tee, gathering all the broken and discarded tees and piling them up beside a tee marker. He brought in his caddie, Jonathan Yarbrough, for some reads. He was the first to play and the last to putt on the crazy-long par-3 8th hole, always a good sign. He was grinding, grinding, grinding.

His golf gifts are ridiculous. You maybe saw the over-his-shoulder backward greenside pitch shot he holed last week at the LIV event. But less appreciated and less known is how hard he has worked on his golf. His maternal grandfather was a commercial fisherman and Phil has that same kind of big muscle build. He’s not long like he was but he can keep up, easily, with Cam Smith and Brian Harman, Phil’s fellow lefthander. The three two-putt pars he made on the last three holes were a study in how you play tournament golf on a hard course. He never took of his shades.

“Phil’s Phil,” Harman said when the round, nearly six hours long, was over. Mickelson had shot 74. “As a lefthander, I grew up idolizing him. Among golfers, he’s always going to be Phil. He’s always going to be known as one of the best golfers ever. He’s always going to be remembered for playing some of the most entertaining golf ever played. The way he played today, he showed how much he still has.”

Still, a third act is coming. It won’t be Arnold’s. It won’t be Jack’s. It won’t be Norman’s. It will be Phil’s. In the meantime, there was his Thursday 74.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@GOlf.com