Phil Mickelson On Feherty (2018) Classic Interview"},"lengthSeconds":"1144","ownerProfileUrl":"http:

Phil Nicholson is ninth on the PGA Tour's all-time wins list, and among those before him only Tiger Woods was born after 1940. In other words, he has lifted many trophies in his time. Of all his victories, none is sweeter than his victory at The Masters in 2004, I mean, it takes us through the early days of the championship. You know, how's your game going? Augusta National that week had won the Bob Hope. That year he had had several top ten in the west. coast and to start the year my game felt fantastic and I started to really drive the ball.

Well, that week I ended up making these hard cuts and I hit a lot of fades all week and the only time I tried to draw it was the 15th. And that was the only time I hit bad drives, but when I just hit this little slice shot, I hit the extremely straight ball and I was able to play from the fairway and use that newfound precision with the short irons for me. The advantage of this was before the golf course had lengthened, so I hit a lot of short irons on the par fours and was able to hit many birdies.

Well, on Sunday you were three with seven holes to play. Did you still have that confidence? The way I saw it was the 12th hole, it was the critical hole because Ernie was a few holes ahead of me, if I birdie the 12th I'll most likely birdie the 13th because it's a hole I play very good and I'm going to have a six. or seven iron in, so I'll just be one back with five to go, the boy, the crit was twelve and I hit this little uh, what I call a pels eight iron, took a little bit off pelz, started it on the pin .

I fell just a fraction to the left, about 15 feet behind the hole the previous two years, I had had the same boat once, missed high, another time I missed low, I knew it was kind of fate to knock this one down in the The key to that putt is don't try to force it but let it die and take the break at the end and when that putt dropped that's when I knew this was going to happen because I played well 13 and I did. good drive and seven I made birdie now I'm just one behind with five to go and I just knew I was going to do it who gets to the final of the Masters knowing they're going to win.

I just told you. I thought that if? Yeah, sorry, okay, I'm glad you pointed that out to me. Yeah, well, you were very close to your grandfather, right, yeah, and he was pretty prophetic the last time you got to talk to him. My grandfather Al Santos. I'd give him a lot of the flags that I won tournaments in, we'd get him out of 18 and he kept saying, "I don't want any more of these regular circuit events. I want a Major like my God, I'm trying, man, I mean, I don't do it." is". easy so that Christmas we knew the end was near so we have this wonderful family reunion with him and he tells me this is the year you are going to win the masters I told him okay, I'm in I like that he passes away in January.

I'm on the 18th green. Chris Demarco is six inches behind my ball and he leaves it there and you can tell he sneaks a little low, catches the lip and misses and I have the reading. I'm, I'm trying to play a little bit more break and damn if my ball's not on the same line and I knew I missed it low, catches the left lip, rings around the cup, goes in, I remember. and my immediate thought, since I'm so high off the ground, okay, while I'm floating, was that he pushed it, that was the first thing I thought, was that he pushed that thing, he had to do it, but we had no other way to get it . in what stands out from your Masters win in 2006.

I've always been kind of a lightning rod in the sense that everything I do really well is like, oh my God, it's overblown how great it is and everything I do evil. it's over the top oh this is just catastrophic and I put two drivers in play that week what exactly is this guy doing? an inch, inch and a half longer, the reason I called it a draw driver was because I couldn't really get good fades with it. I could only try to hit draws with it and I hit it 25 yards further than my other driver, so when I needed to control when I wanted to make that cut around the 13th when I wanted to make that cut around the 10th or get into the fairway on the 17th or 14th I I hit this other driver which was one higher than the other and also the longer one had less loft because when you get a longer shaft, your angle of attack at one inch is usually about two degrees shallower or more vertical.

Look at the fact that you know that assigns me so I ended up going a degree less loft to keep the launch down and the spin rate down and I was able to uh I was timing it so well in that final round that I ended up hitting it in the holes like 14 and 17 when normally I would hit the other one because I was hitting it like that. Well, I just didn't want to change and I handled it phenomenally that week and ended up winning. That was the best thing about that was having a three-shot lead on the last hole without having to birdie because I was able to take it, I was able to enjoy the fact that I knew I was going to win and appreciate the crowd and that walk is still in my head. about how fun and special it was, does it make any difference knowing you're going? winning when you're three shots ahead and the knowledge that you're going to win when you're three shots behind because you knew you were going to win both times, that's true, but you really knew you were going to win with a three shot lead, so that there can be different levels of knowledge, walking into that canyon on the 18th hole with that big yellow marker up there and just those tens of thousands of people with the clubhouse behind it, you know it has to be something so special. feeling of knowing you are going to win is the best, there is no better feeling because I had a multiple stroke lead.

I knew that if I made par on 18 I would win, no matter how difficult the holes were and here I am. The green 15 feet from the hole. I knew I had won the 2004 Masters. It will always be the most important thing. It's my first Major. Winning the Masters as an American puts you in that history, but the greatest achievement of my career is winning the Open. Because my game was never suited for that, I liked to hit it high with a spin. I went out to play and I didn't care where the pin was. I was trying to back up 60 feet because I thought that was cool.

Sometimes you go off the green and I make bogeys, but I didn't care, I just wanted to see that ball sauce that was the coolest, the pleaser that cried, there you go, yeah, so I ended up not having the game for that and When I entered the circuit was not prepared to play Links golf and the golf champion of the year is Phil Mickelson. Finally winning that tournament is the biggest feeling of accomplishment for me because I learned and succeeded in a totally different style of play. play that what I had grown up playing what's your favorite Ryder Cup story that maybe we don't know so I've had great teammates over the years and one of my favorite people I've played with is David Toms. and we have had a lot of fun together we played together at the bell tower in 2002 we were teammates and we played together very tight alternating shots in the driving area here we are two up with three holes to play and we reached this par for the 16th nicole and I have to make the drive and it's a 14 yard wide fairway and that's perfect.

I hit the most majestic 3-wood for me in the fairway, okay, and he has a 9-iron and this hole. It has a kind of boomerang green that wraps from right to left around this bunker and the green has a tear to the right of the bunker, so you can hit it on the pin or 50 feet to the right of the pin and it will hit the green. and funnel right next to the hole and David Tom is one of the best iron players in the game. He has a nine iron. There is no way this shot is going to be outside of the 12 or 15 feet around it.

Any grease blocks it at the edge of the bunker. It's very uncharacteristic but it's on the edge of the bunker and now I have to take this shot left-handed. I have to aim 60 feet to the right of the hole. I take out a 9 iron to open the face. I hit it and it shoots to the side, catches the slope and rolls down four feet from the cup, so I'm pretty proud of myself. I walk towards the side of the green. I just hit two of the best shots I've ever hit on the three-wood fairway. which let's not underestimate how good it is for me and then the nine iron comes out of this bunker four feet away, I'm standing on his bones and David calls me over for the reading and says: Hey Phil, come here, come here, take a look look, so I stay. behind him and he looks, like he shouts over his shoulder, what do you think?

So what do I think I said? If we had ended up winning the match 2-1, I think most people don't really understand the nature of your relationship with Tiger. How would you describe it? I always thought he's really cool because I really appreciate what he's done. the game, but in that he has done as much for me or more than anyone for all of us because we are all in this together, okay, we all make a living from golf, whether they are members of the media, whether they are players, caddies, etc. We all want to develop this product and no one developed the game more than him when I went on tour in 1990, in the summer of 1992 or when I won the Tucson Open the purse was a million dollars, the complete purse for first place 180,000 and I remember Having thought back in the mid-90s, I wonder if we'll ever play for a million-dollar first-place check.

I don't know, probably not in my lifetime, but I hope we do and here we are every week with a first place check of over a million and that's it. because of the tiger, now we have these stock markets that have gone up a lot, we have revenue and exposure on television, we have more media covering it, which creates more value for corporate America and all these opportunities increased my income and that of all the other players in golf. course and off the golf course so I always appreciate that. I've told him many times I don't know if he thinks I'm sincere or not because sometimes I can be a little sarcastic but I try to say it. it's sincere because I really mean it and I'm sorry and we'll always look at it with appreciation and over the last probably four or five years through the president's cup ryder cup uh partnerships that we've created to help bring out some of the best US golf, we have worked very well together and I have developed a whole new respect for his mind and how detail-oriented he is, especially in this last Ryder Cup.

He was instrumental in putting each player in a position to success, I think one of the best shots I've ever seen on the 13th from the pine straw between the trees was play percentage, percentage, play percentage, although let me explain to you what play percentage looks like internally , you have a shot dispersion very few people make every shot right on the pin for me, a left handed player, if I hit it, it will be longer to the right and if I push it, it will be shorter to the left, well, the green is like that, so if I aim for the center of the green and go off it, it goes short left, it's still on the green and if I shoot it (I normally would never admit it, but I could have shot it fractionally), it stretches to the right and ends up carrying the cree in this situation also when you are in pine needles the more loft you have the more opportunities you will have for things to get between the ball and the face shoot sideways and potentially hit the tree so the club The straightest face I can hit has more coverage. the ball and reduces the ability of things to get between the ball in the face, so I had to go between that space.

I couldn't go left or right of the trees. I had to go between them, so hitting a wedge was a bigger risk than hitting a six iron and the green was set up so perfectly that I had a huge margin of error in shot dispersion and that was the high percentage of play I always had. you thought that way. Very analytical. There are many things that I process. every shot and there are many details. Do you want me to mention it or is it really like that? Tell me well in my practice I build a reference, so I hit the same shot over and over again building a nine iron that goes 145 yards, let's say now, that will vary depending on the temperature and the altitude and it will change with the time of day and all that, as well as with the wind and those effects, but one of the things people will say is that I hit my wedge, you know, 120.

Well, you can hit 120 under certain conditions, but in the morning the ball won't hit 120, maybe in the afternoon when it's warmer and the ball warms up, but it's going to be five to 10 yards short in the morning, people don't take that into account. If you put a little water between the club facing the ball, people don't know, it actually increases the spin, makes it shorter, the first cut always comes out six to eight yards dead, if the grain is inside you , goes to pitch and hits lower on the face pitches lower has more spin if you are lowering the club a little faster you will get more out of it if it is sitting on zoysia or off a t always goes five yards further with each iron based on the fact that the center of gravity is below the ball and it's launched higher, a little less spin, all these things I have to take into account when I look at the lie, okay?

What is the lie like and How will the ball come out in relation to him? My 145 9 iron is now 10 off so I have a normal swing to the right and then I have asecond swing for each iron shot and it's a slightly shorter backswing with the same acceleration so I have 145 and 155 yards.shot what lie are you going to do what is the temperature what is the wind how do I want the ball enter the green if you drown one inch three yards come out of it one degree up is three yards so if you open the face one degree that's three yards, so if I have a reference of 145, I want to fly 142, I can reduce one inch, it'll go in a little lower, a little flatter and come loose, or I can just open it up and hit it a little more.

The cut is going to be three yards, but it's going to support all of these variables like processing them, yeah, so when I look at the lie and evaluate the situation, I see what type of grass it is and those are the nuances that allow me to be so precise with my wedges and my short irons and my distance control and that's why iron play has been a big strength for my game because I can be accurate to within a yard or two and uh in my practice sessions. because I hit 1500 balls every month for those specific numbers, my baseline is pretty nice if I hit a shot at 145 and I feel like I hit it, that's usually where it goes, yeah, 2006, you come in with two majors in a row.

Do you know if you want to mention it or do you know if we should leave it out? No, I mean, look, you have to take the good with the bad. I mean, I think I've always used failure as a motivator for success because it comes back. I am very excited to work harder and Wingfoot was a motivator for me to work harder. I think if I get back in that position, I think everything will work out, but a lot of people consider the drive on 18 to be the problem. That wasn't the problem because I had only hit two fairways all day, so do the calculations, the chances of me getting the next one right are very, very low, but where I made the mistake was that I had a good lie and all I had to do.

My short game in the history of my career was the best that week. I made some shots. I did a balloon up and down at 10. I still think the pin was on the right front. I had had a 64 degree wedge for a month. I got pretty good and that week really shined, it was my best performance, all I had to do was put that three iron on the green. I had a perfectly tight line to cut that thread and pushed it a fraction towards the edge. of the extremities, if I give myself a little more space, the ball will be on or around the green and my up and down percentage was the best in my entire career that week that I would have gotten. up and down, I think it was the second three iron shot I was wrong on, not that he doesn't disagree with you either, I mean he gets a veto a year, how did he negotiate?

Congressional approval involved or uh, so he found out from the beginning that uh, I'm going to do some stupid things, right? No, that's how I do sometimes the math adds up in my mind, but it doesn't really add up and I'll do some crazy things. things and I ended up giving him a veto and the one I remember once you used the veto we are in new orleans is after the masters we have three majors coming up, I get to the ninth hole in the English turn, I'm missing the lake, the bowling in front and I'm raw, but I have a pretty good line.

I'm thinking okay, if I could jump this out of the water twice, it will hit the shore and bounce. the green one I think three is still in play and he's like oh no no dude I'm using my veto I said no no I really think three is in play here I don't like this video here I think I should know. I think you should wait for the older ones. He said no, I'm using it, so I walked up and hit nine irons down the fairway 40 yards away. I ended up hitting it and making par, whatever, but it worked now for the only time.

I overruled it was at the O2, well should you watch the video or once in a while? Well, that's what happens at the O2. We were at the open championship at Muirfield when the year Ernie Ells won, when did you find out about the cancer diagnosis? It was May 2009, that was, you know, one thing is you'd rather go through this yourself than see someone you care about go through something like that and I'll never forget you wearing pink at Colonial. I will never forget. Forget Vijay Singh wearing pink and colonial and so many people wearing pink there, whether you believe in prayer or energy or whatever, you feel that positive energy.

It was just a month later that your mom Mary was also diagnosed with cancer. Yeah, a couple of months later, she ended up having the same thing and they're both doing great and so many women, a couple hundred thousand women every year, get diagnosed with breast cancer and it's horrible because despite the success. The treatment rate is very high, it's still brutal, it's brutal treatment and I really feel for the people and the families that go through that.