Philip Alfred Mickelson, an American professional golfer who is popular for playing risk-taking games and a great short game. He is nicknamed as “Lefty” and is the most successful left-handed golfer in history. He is the only left-handed golf player to win a U.S. Amateur championship. He has won numerous tours and events but couldn’t win a major for number of years and the reason what others thought was his strategy to play the difficult shots which was considered to be very risky.
Mickelson is known for his powerful full swing that was bit inaccurate but this style made him to win many PGA tournaments. He always played well in majors but never used to win the tournaments held between 1999 and 2003. He was always a second place or third place finisher and holds a record of the most second place finisher (5 Times) in U.S. Open history.
Mickelson won his first major tournament in 2004 Masters followed by PGA Championship in 2005 (against the golf betting markets who had all been predicting a win for John Daly) and U.S. Championship in 2006. These wins took Mickelson to 2nd place in World Golf Rankings, his highest ever.
He had to face some family problems in the coming years that reflected in his performance but came back strong to win 2010 Masters Tournament, which was also a comeback tournament for Tiger Woods after the scandal. Mickelson had several opportunities to be the Number 1 golfer but never grabbed it.
Mickelson was then diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis in 2010. Post treatment, he participated in many tournaments including some majors and had less success in winning tournaments like before. In spite of a dip in his performance, he would be known as one of the best left handed golfer for all time as out of his 48 Professional wins, 40 were from PGA Tour. He was ranked 3rd for highest money grosser in 2011 and then became 2nd highest paid athlete in U.S. Let’s hope the aggression continues and proves his worth to be one of the best golfers in Golf history.
Mickelson is expected to be a key member of Team USA when they face Europe, and is one of the key reasons why the latest odds for Ryder Cup show that the Americans are slim favourites to win the Cup.