FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — This could have been Phil Mickelson’s week.
This could have been his Ryder Cup.
The 55-year-old six-time major champion who led an exodus to the breakaway LIV Golf league has more appearances (12) than any player in the U.S. vs. Europe event. He would have been a natural to captain the team at Bethpage Black.
Bethpage is the brawny muni outside New York City where the tradition of fans serenading him with “Happy Birthday” took off in 2002. It’s where Mickelson returned to golf shortly after his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, and where two of his agonizing six runner-up finishes came in the only major he never won, the U.S. Open.
“That’s where I felt things kind of clicked” with the New York fans, Mickelson said in 2019, before his return to the course for the PGA Championship, which remains his last big appearance here.
Mickelson loved New York and New York loved its adopted left-hander. At the Ryder Cup, a tournament that attempts to wring every ounce of emotion out of every person involved — captains, players, fans — nobody could have tapped into that better than Mickelson.
Instead, as former captain Paul Azinger put it, “he hit a fork in the road, and he took it.”
Even with Mickelson in his early 40s and still among the top 10 in the world when Bethpage Black was announced as this year’s host back in 2013, people in golf could see where this was trending.
And as recently as 2021, a captaincy at Bethpage still looked very much a part of Mickelson’s future.
Four years ago, as the U.S. gathered in Whistling Straits for what would become a rare runaway victory, Mickelson was only four months removed from winning the PGA Championship at age 50. His play didn’t hold up after the PGA, so his string of appearances as a player — a stretch that ran from 1995 through 2018 — ran out.
But captain Steve Stricker asked him to come on as a vice captain, and Mickelson gladly accepted, tweeting he was “humbled and honored” to accept the assignment.
Not six months later, though, he spearheaded a long, ugly and well-documented split to play for the Saudi-funded LIV.
Because of that move, Mickelson has been cast out of what could have been his role as an elder statesman of “traditional golf.” Outside of azaleas at Augusta National and the Swilcan Bridge at St. Andrews, the Ryder Cup is about as traditional as it gets in this sport.
“I don’t feel I’m the right guy to be involved with the team because I’m a very divisive character right now, if you will, and I understand that,” Mickelson said last year on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show,” setting the stage for a call he knew would not come.
One of the ironies is that, six months after he said that, the PGA of America tabbed Keegan Bradley as captain. Bradley and Mickelson were good friends and a successful pairing over the span of two Ryder Cups. They went 4-1 together over 2012 and ’14, though that pairing never got much run because the U.S. lost both times.
Back in the early part of his career, Mickelson shrewdly assembled a reputation as a player who seemed just like the rest of us.
Sure, Tiger Woods lorded over the sport with a single-minded intensity. But if golf fans were looking for an underdog — a player who brought them along for the ride, was slightly pudgy, would four-putt occasionally, then make up for it with a flop shot slathered in his so-called side sauce (side spin) that no one would dream of replicating — then Mickelson was the guy.
Nobody does underdog stories better than New York, and all those feelings were amplified in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
That Mickelson’s birthday lands during U.S. Open week made it perfect. The fans at Bethpage sang “Happy Birthday” to him on the first tee in 2002. That year, he made the briefest of Sunday runs at Woods — trimming a four-shot deficit to two for a hot minute at around the third tee box.
In 2009, the crowd went crazy when Mickelson tied for the lead with an eagle on 13 set up by an approach to 4 feet from 229 yards. But he followed with an array of short missed putts and bogeys over the next four holes and made a different kind of history — his fifth U.S. Open runner-up finish was a record.
His meltdown on the 18th on another New York course, Winged Foot, stands as his toughest U.S. Open loss. Another moment on another Long Island course, Shinnecock, saw Mickelson at his worst — hitting a moving ball on the green to protest the USGA setup and taking a two-shot penalty on his way to a 10.
Golf purists saw it as an abomination. Mickelson said he meant no disrespect, “and if that’s the way people took it, I apologize to them.” Fans moved on.
Two years later at Kiawah, when Mickelson became the oldest man to win a major, doing so at the PGA Championship, the gallery swarmed him as he walked toward the 18th green.
Then came the move to LIV that made his return to “traditional” golf, and to what seemed like a slam-dunk spot as captain at the Ryder Cup, all but impossible.
“As a divisive individual, I don’t think I’m the best unifier going forward for the Ryder Cup,” he said in the interview with McAfee. “And that’s fine because I’ve had so many great memories with it.”
Even with Mickelson on the outside, his former partner and the current captain certainly values his legacy.
Asked who the best Ryder Cup players of all time were, Bradley didn’t hesitate, listing Mickelson in a group with Azinger, Payne Stewart and Raymond Floyd. Bradley said a Ryder Cup resume is something that can never be erased.
“I remember watching events as a kid and my dad saying, ‘He’s a Ryder Cupper’ or ‘He’s a major champion,’” Bradley said. “That never goes away. That’s with you forever.”
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AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.
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