AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Even at a place as revered as Augusta National Golf Club, time does not stop. In a world where change is the only constant, the unintended benefit of the passage of time is that it highlights the essence of a place.
Or, in Phil Mickelson's case, a person.
Last week, I took a behind-the-scenes tour of what makes the Masters operation tick. Over 100 digital content curators and creators sat and typed and scurried about in buildings built for a sole purpose: create the best golf experience in the world for those in attendance and those who are not.
These men and women were scattered around the behemoth in the room, the platform for their work. You know that app you downloaded a week ago -- the one that does everything short of let you schedule a tee time? It turns out that is an amalgamation of complex algorithms that would make Jordan Spieth look like he's using an abacus to hit his shots.
IBM partnered with Augusta National to create, well, everything and anything. You want video of all 20,000 shots from this year's Masters? Sure, go watch them not only as they're happening but any time you want. Are you turned off by the lack of commentary on those shots? Fine, we'll cover that for you with artificial intelligence that receives hundreds of potential comments on Rory McIlroy sending one over the 7th green and trying to get up and down. The best and most appropriate comment is chosen and fed into the app.
In 1935, when Gene Sarazen made his famous 2 on the 15th, which helped him win the tournament, a dozen people saw it. Twelve. More people live in Bryson DeChambeau's content house than saw that piece of golf history.
Now? Not only would you have been able to watch this shot on a piece of glass in the palm of your hand, you would have been able to fire it off to thousands of people also holding pieces of glass in their hands. You would have been able to FaceTime your friends and relive the shot together. You would have been able to see what it did to your Masters fantasy team. You could have checked how wrong IBM's supercomputer predictor, Watson, was about Sarazen's score on the hole.
All that to say: This is not your grandfather's Masters. It's not your father's Masters, either. He would have seen non-enhanced 13th hole and a more barren practice area. He wouldn't have been able to watch a tournament concluding at Augusta National the week before the Masters, either.
In the midst of all of this, the sidebars have elevate the main event. The golf course itself -- all 7,500 yards of it -- has never mattered more. This is why Augusta National recently spent a significant sum to enhance the 13th hole. Because without the rollicking slopes of this place and a track up for a fight, all the rest simply fades away.
"In our case, my focus has always been on this competition and on the Augusta National Golf Course," said chairman Fred Ridley on Wednesday.
As time has flown right by and kingdoms have risen around the golf, the simplicity of the importance of the course and the tournament have become completely paramount. It's because of all that is extraneous that we are able to see more clearly the part that matters most.
Which brings us back to Phil.
Change applies to place, but it also applies to person. And nobody over the last few years has changed more than Phil Mickelson.
His roller coaster off the course is well-documented, and it came to a head this week at Augusta National. He pulled into the place where he a three-time champion is supposed to feel like a king with all the disposition of an aged, broken jester.
Instead of delivering the goods Tuesday as he held court with scribes and proclamation bringers, Mickelson instead slid into the shadows later that day at a Champions Dinner where he was supposed to be the heir to Ben Crenshaw's hosting throne.
It made for a wild juxtaposition early in the week. Then, of course, he went out and played two rounds under par, replete with death-defying pars, drivers off the deck and a game that looked … complete? Phil was kind of in the mix.
A 75 in Round 3 pushed him off the front page, but if there's one thing we know about Mickelson and his insane career, it's that he always has another act.
Phil Mickelson’s first top-10 in a major: 1993 PGA Championship.
— Shane Bacon (@shanebacon) April 9, 2023
With a top-10 today, that’s a gap of 29.5 years!
Paired on Suday with his own heir apparent, Jordan Spieth, Mickelson went out and shot 31 on the second nine, 65 in the final round, a best-ball score of 58 with Spieth and beat or tied everyone on planet Earth who is not ranked No. 1 in the world. At the Masters. Like, the actual first major championship of the year.
How unlikely was it that Mickelson would play three rounds under par, beat 2022 reigning champion Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa by four each and McIlroy, who missed the cut, by 13?
Here's a list of factual statements about Lefty.
- He is one of eight players who hasn't scored a point on LIV Golf this year.
- He was ranked No. 372 in the world on Data Golf (LIV statistics included), which is behind Taiga Semikawa, Aaron Cockerill and eight amateurs.
- He had finished in the top 10 of exactly one non-senior tournament since winning the 2021 PGA Championship. It came at LIV Chicago last year.
- He had one top 10 in his last 20 majors (a win).
The referendum on Mickelson coming into this week had nothing to do with LIV. It had everything to do with the fact that he had one top 20 at the Masters since 2013 and one top 10 in any major since 2017. Forget LIV, forget everything else. Mickelson, at 52 years old, is an average golfer.
Then he put up 3.01 strokes gained per round at one of the hardest tournaments of the year. To contextualize that number, Tiger Woods gained 3.02 strokes on the field in 2019, a tournament victory about which movies will be made.
With Mickelson's T2 result, all the nonsense that he has posited -- remember, we're talking about a man who one month ago tweeted at me that the PGA Tour turned down a billion-dollar plan, which he brought to the table -- and all that has been written about him since he flipped the script now stands to serve a purpose.
Change allows us to see reality more clearly, and the reality is that Mickelson is one of the greatest winners in the history of this sport. If nothing would have changed over the last two years and he came into this week following a missed cut at the Players Championship, it would have been a stunner. But this? Following all the hoopla that's occurred? It's absolutely shocking while also serving as an even more stark reminder of who he is as a player: one of the best to ever do it.
That's not justification for what he did nor how he did it, but if there's an upshot, this is it.
In that sense, Mickelson and Augusta National hold a parallel. One confident champion. One proud place. Their union has been good for both place and person.
The former has changed, most would say for the worse. The latter has changed, most would say for the better. Their commonality, however, is that change has certainly occurred and the centrality of greatness that change has inadvertently disclosed is similar.
Augusta National has a way of answering questions for you when you cannot answer them yourself. That's a good thing for Mickelson, who was reticent to speak. The golf course and the golf tournament told a story, though, and that story was as follows.
Strip everything away -- the rain jackets with goofy logos, the polarized sunglasses, the polarizing quotes, the meme-able photos from the Champions Dinner, the insistence that coffee has made him whole again -- and what you get in Mickelson is somebody who often takes circuitous routes to prove obvious points. Sometimes, and perhaps unintentionally so, it seems they're actually helpful.
That's part of the sadness of his departure from the PGA Tour, though. Nobody wants to watch a ruler chase a siren instead of celebrate a reign.
The more time passes, the more things change, the more evident their essence becomes. This is true of Augusta National, which has stood the test of time, and it is true of Phil Mickelson, who has done the same.
The essence of Phil is this: When you find him laid bare like only Augusta National can find folks, he is a champion. One of the great champions in the history of the sport. A king at this place. There are easier ways to get to this conclusion, but they might not be as effective.
