Phil Mickelson saved his best round of 2018 (literally, his best round of the year) for the last day before U.S. captain Jim Furyk makes his Ryder Cup team captain's picks on Tuesday. Mickelson, who didn't really need any additional ammo anyway, shot a 9-under 63 on Monday in the final round of the 2018 Dell Technologies Championship to rocked up the leaderboard. He finished at 10 under for the week and inside the top 10 at the time he finished.

Mickelson birdied five of his first seven holes in Round 4 and went out in 31 (with a bogey!) before closing on the back nine with a 32 that included a birdie at the last. That followed a 72-72-67 start in which Mickelson wasn't too far off the cut line. 

After struggling mightily with the driver over the first two days, Lefty finished in the top 10 in each of the final two rounds in strokes gained driving. He also ranked No. 1 in putting on Monday, which last time I checked is a pretty good combination.

"It's fun to play like that and get off to a good start and just kind of keep the round going," Mickelson told Steve Sands of NBC. "I drove the ball in play, hit some good iron shots and made some putts. You have to do all that to shoot a low score. It's fun to shoot the number I feel like I've been capable of. This gives me a little bit of momentum going into next week's tournament."

Before next week's tournament, though, Furyk will make his selections for the 2018 U.S. team. Mickelson hasn't missed a squad since the early 1990s, and he's not going to miss this one. It is presumed that Furyk will select Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Bryson DeChambeau on Tuesday.

"Hopefully, it will make it easy for him to take me," Mickelson told Sands. "I'd love to be on that team. I'd love to go over there and give it a shot to win for the first time on European soil for quite some time. I'm hoping that I'm one of them."

Mickelson went on to put the onus on the eight golfers who automatically qualified and make up the core of the squad. It's those players who should choose, he said, based on who they want to play with and what the good matchups are. Mickelson has nothing to worry about, of course, and even if Furyk was starting to get the slightest notion that he should go in a different direction, that was put to bed on Monday with the round of the year (and the tournament) from Mickelson.