Phil Being Phil
Phil Mickelson makes wild (but believable) hole-in-one claim in LIV Golf media guide
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Phil Mickelson will never catch Tiger Woods in major championships, but there's one area where the lefty has left his longtime rival in the dust.
We're talking about holes-in-one, and Mickelson claims to have a ridiculous amount of them. Well, ridiculous for anyone who doesn't have six majors to his credit and is widely considered to be one of the greatest golfers of all time.
Still, it was pretty stunning to see this answer from Phil tucked into a player survey from the 2024 LIV Golf media guide. Have a look for yourself:
Yep, that's right, 47 aces. FORTY-SEVEN. That's nearly one for every year Mickelson has been alive. Incredible stuff. Even if "only" five of them came in PGA Tour events. (Hal Sutton and Robert Allenby share that mark with 10 each.)
For comparison, Tiger is still stuck on 20 aces. What a slacker. And that actually includes a 20-year drought(!) between No. 19 and No. 20, which shows how flukish these things really are. Or, at least, that's what people like myself who don't have any like to say to make ourselves feel better.
Believe it or not, there's at least one golfer out there believed to have legitimately made more holes-in-one in one than Mickelson. That would be retired pro Mancil Davis, whose staggering total of 51 earned him the nickname "King of Aces."
Golf Magazine actually put him through a lie-detector test in 2020 that he passed with flying colors. Knowing how Phil thinks, he probably knows about that and wants the record. And knowing what shape Phil is in, we're certainly not betting against him making a few more.