Phil can still thrill. 

In the final round of LIV Golf Virginia at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, Phil Mickelson hit a shot on the 17th hole that landed in the rough, on the edge of a greenside bunker. So, with his back to the pin and standing sideways in the bunker, the 54-year-old hit a flop shot for the ages and holed the shot. 

“It was one of my better ones,” Mickelson said afterward. “I don’t know what to say because I have to aim so far left because I’m hooking it over my shoulder and trying to guess how much it’s going to hook is the challenge. But it wasn’t hard stopping it. It was hard guessing how much it was going to hook because it was soft greens and I had such an uphill lie, the ball was going to go high, but just judging how much the ball was going to come over my shoulder, that was the challenge. Even I was a little bit surprised.”

Mickelson finished T4 at 13 under, two strokes behind champion Joaquin Niemann. 

“It meant a lot to me because I wanted to finish this round off,” the six-time major champion said. “I had opportunities to make birdie, and I just had a couple of unfortunate breaks. So to get a good break like that and then to follow it up with a birdie on 18 feels really good. Like I said, just having opportunities to compete and win again is what's so exciting. I would love to have a few more this year and hopefully break through and get one.”

Since joining LIV in 2022, Mickelson has mostly struggled on the course. But maybe this shot gives him some confidence heading into what could be his final U.S. Open next week.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Phil Mickelson Holes Unreal Flop Shot at LIV Golf Virginia, Surprising Himself.

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