A few weeks before what should have been his defining victory at the PGA Championship, Phil Mickelson was pondering his “greatest decision”. In Mickelson’s hubristic mind, you might suggest, that would be nigh on an impossible task. For one, because that is probably a daily occurrence, and to sift through such an immense pit of knowledge would be like asking a man to identify the biggest grain of sand in, to take a random example, the Saudi Arabian desert.
But alas, after surveying the annals of greatness, Mickelson arrived at the sort of grand verdict befitting his status as a licensed pilot whose head has always occupied a realm 35,000ft in the clouds. “The greatest decision I made after owning a plane for 20 years was selling it... because it has reduced my stress levels exponentially,” Mickelson surmised in a Forbes interview after parting with his Gulfstream V jet, which retails at around $40m (£30m). “When [my wife] Amy and I would travel to the mountains to go ski, I would need to know months in advance when I was going to go, so that I could get a hangar.”
