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Phil Mickelson was the defending champion of the PGA Championship heading into Southern Hills last week but the 51-year-old legend opted to stay in hiding and not try to run it back.
Even though Mickelson didn’t strike a single shot in the 2022 PGA Championship, he still suffered one of the most beautiful losses of his career because he had to sit there and watch (he probably didn’t watch but he has most definitely heard about what happened) as his former caddie, the great Jim “Bones” Mackay, was on the bag for another major championship victory, this time with Justin Thomas who took home the Wanamaker Trophy with a thrilling victory that he clinched after a three-hole playoff with Will Zalatoris.
Bones, of course, was on Mickelson’s bag for many years and won five majors with Phil. They broke up in 2017 and everyone wondered why the seemingly perfect team would split apart.
Recently we found out a big reason why – Mickelson was very bad at paying Bones for his work. This is from Alan Shipnuck’s new book on Phil:
“Money was a big factor in Mickelson’s bust-up with his career-long caddie, Jim (Bones) Mackay. They announced their split in June 2017 with chummy matching press releases. At the time, the overriding emotion in golf circles was disbelief. “It felt like your parents were splitting up,” says John Wood, a longtime Tour caddie and now an NBC/Golf Channel commentator. The statements made the divorce sound amicable, but that was nonsense. Bones had fired Phil at the ’17 Memorial, over a series of simmering grievances (laid out in detail in the book), including hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdue back pay.”
After firing Phil, Bones went on to become a very good on-course reporter for Golf Channel and NBC. His caddying days seemed to be over but then last fall Thomas was able to lure him back to the job he loves so much and now they have their first major together in under a year of working together.
It was only fitting, too, that Bones and JT got that win on Sunday at the PGA Championship. While Phil was off hiding with a legacy that gets tarnished each passing day, Bones was out there celebrating a huge win with a young star who is probably also really good at paying his caddie for all of his hard work.
We don’t know when we’re going to see Phil again. He’s been out of the spotlight since making some explosive comments about the PGA Tour and the Saudi golf league back in February.
But we do know that what happened yesterday was great for his former teammate who is back doing what he loves and is getting paid for it, too, which has to be nice.
Sometimes everything just works out so perfectly.
Golf, man. What a sport!
Quick hits: Andrew Wiggins posterizes Luka Doncic… Justin Turner’s awesome fake out… NHL ref’s funny penalty call… And more.
– You need to see all of these angles of Andrew Wiggins’ dunk on Luka Doncic during the Warriors’ Game 3 win last night in Dallas. Wow.
– Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner got a base runner out by faking him out and it was such an awesome move.
– The ref during last night’s Flames-Oilers game had a hilarious penalty call on everyone who was sitting in the penalty box.
– Charles Barkley rode a horse to the ‘Inside the NBA’ set last night and it was as incredible as it sounds.
