No. 20: The Weight of Lefty
Dear Pards,
If your wife is anything like mine, the walk up to the airport luggage counter often feels less like an airline check-in and more like a Dana White weigh-in. The odds of catching a right hook are about the same. The only difference is that the airlines have one weight class.
Dana Delta has decided that 50 pounds is the maximum amount of shit one passenger can haul before paying extra. We all have stuff. More than we'd like to admit. Our first instinct is usually to find a workaround. My wife's glare, effective almost everywhere else in life, doesn't move the scale. Neither does tucking my foot beneath the suitcase or redistributing a few pounds between bags. The weight is still there. And sooner or later, something has to be consolidated, checked, or left behind altogether.
The latest story involving Phil Mickelson feels like another sleeve of golf balls crammed into a bag that's been over the weight limit for years.
Which makes me wonder: How much more can Phil carry before his bag isn't just overweight, but bursting at the seams in more ways than one?
-Overweight at O’Hare
Dear Overweight,
By this point, there isn’t a tweet, trade, bet, or story from Phil that could surprise me. The news last week did, however, feel like another pound of baggage in an already overweight duffel. I’d even argue that a zipper or two of his travel bag is already ripped.
For someone who has been the king at weaseling his way out of whatever lie he finds himself in, there's only so much room for Mickelson to manipulate the stocks scale before it costs him more than $100 at the luggage counter.
It’s sad that the latest from Lefty doesn’t surprise me. Yet who walks into an airport with no luggage? Regardless of how many majors you’ve won, dollars you’ve made, or how high you jumped hopped on the 18th green at Augusta.
Phil has flaws. Like you, and like me. And while I condone zero of his actions over the past few years, especially the alleged ones from the recent piece last week, I’d be lying if I said the bulk of Phil’s baggage doesn't make him more interesting.
If you don’t believe me, go read Billy Walters' Gambler, then go rewatch Sunday of the 2006 U.S. Open and tell me how different the final stretch at Winged Foot was from the opening scene of Rounders.
Here was Mickelson's face after fanning driver on 18 into the hospitality tent, leading to a double bogey that lost to aces full of nines.
Ogilvy even looks a little like Teddy KGB.
KVV wrote a great piece on Friday around the latest Phil saga in Rancho Santa Fe from the perspective of someone whose golf fandom seemed to have stemmed, in a way, from Lefty’s golf. He ended it with this:
It’s a sad fate, tossing your Mickelson memories into the dustbin of the past. It’s one that would probably torment the showman in him if he could ever be honest with himself. But it might also be a fitting one.
-Kevin Van Valkenburg (The Fried Egg)
If you looked up to Phil as a role model or valued him as more than a golfer, tearing down the KPMG poster in your bedroom makes sense. Send me the oversized Ford polo.
But throwing the golf memories down the drain would be a shame.
As a golf fan, I’ve always loved the showman in Mickelson. That said, the gaudy Rolex Cellini Prince strangling his wrist behind the phony Trump-esque thumbs up never screamed sincere to me.
Like Matt Damon’s character in the '98 cult classic, Phil doesn't just flirt with risk. He seems drawn to it. Sometimes it manifests as magic from the pinestraw. Sometimes it’s sold as shares of Sable Offshore.
At the end of the day, it’s a matter of when, not if, the seams of Phil’s suitcase rip in an irreparable way.
I just hope he finds the fix that will not only carry the weight of his baggage, but also set the scale to zero.
P╞r╠℮P.S. All month, the Postage Stamp at the top of the newsletter will be Shinnecock, the site of this year’s US Open on Long Island, by Dave Baysden. It’s also the art on this month’s postcard for members of the Postage Club.
Yesterday morning, I limped off the tarmac in Copenhagen after successfully completing a red-eye from JFK with a one-year-old. A three-hour car ride then landed us in a small coastal town in southwest Sweden, a tad north of Gothenburg, where I’ll be for the next ten days with my wife’s family.
This’ll be my first Midsommar. Which is basically Sweden making the summer solstice a national holiday and an excuse to eat boiled potatoes and pickled herring all day.
Yes, I brought my clubs. Yes, the sun never sets. Yes, I’ll be hitting low bullets by the sea (with no hat) at 10 pm, before turning on the infamous world feed to watch Scottie do the same in Southampton on Sunday. Sorry Kiz.
If you haven’t seen it on socials, the third edition of our monthly mail club, the Postage Club, was sent out earlier this month. It’s a nod to Father’s Day and paired with a postcard of a Dave Baysden Shinnecock painting, printed exclusively for our members. If you subscribe before Scheffler sinks his final putt on Sunday, we’ll send it to you. Thanks for being here.
