Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka could alter legacies on Sunday at PGA Championship

Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka will play in the final group on Sunday at the PGA Championship, each chasing their place in golf history

Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka don’t belong to the same generation. Their professional golf careers haven’t followed the same trajectories. Their personalities—the fan-friendly Mickelson and the purposeful Koepka—are different.

But whatever winding paths both of them have trod, whatever brilliant successes and disheartening failures they’ve endured, they’ve wound up in the same place, the final group on Sunday at the 103rd PGA Championship.

The 50-year-old Mickelson will go into the final round at Kiawah Island leading the 31-year-old Koepka by one shot, at seven-under for the tournament and atop the leaderboard at a major championship after 54 holes for the first time since 2013.

They’re both chasing something they’ve lifted before, the Wanamaker Trophy, but doing so again on Sunday night will mean different things to the both of them.

Mickelson wasn’t supposed to be here. A month away from his 51st birthday, his best days are well behind him as he enters the twilight of his Hall of Fame career. For nearly five years he looked like his time contending in majors was over, that he would never get another chance to win his sixth title.

Or, at least, that’s what people thought. Mickelson has proven everybody wrong the first three days. When he birdied the 10th hole on Saturday, he got to 10-under and led the tournament by five shots. He went 20 consecutive holes on a difficult golf course without a bogey, an incredible feat even for someone half his age. While he didn’t make things easy for himself coming in, making bogey on the 12th and double-bogey on 13 after hitting his tee shot into the water, he grinded his way to a two-under round, his sights firmly set on his second PGA Championship title.

A win on Sunday would make Mickelson the 10th player since World War II to win six majors. The company he would keep is legendary: Arnie, Watson, Player, Snead, Hogan, and, of course, Jack and Tiger. He would be the oldest major champion in history. Eight years removed from his last major and 16 from his only PGA title, this PGA Championship would be his moment like Tiger enjoyed winning the Masters in 2019: already among the best players in history but adding to his legacy when nobody expected it.

Mickelson, though, isn’t thinking about any of the history he would make. “I think that because I feel or believe that I’m playing really well and I have an opportunity to contend for a major championship on Sunday and I’m having so much fun that it’s easier to stay in the present and not get ahead of myself. And so I think that’s a big part of it,” he said following his round on Saturday.

Mickelson was a prodigy who won his first PGA Tour title as an amateur at the age of 20, eight months after Koepka was born. But he didn’t win his first major until he was nearly 34.

Koepka has taken a different road than Mickelson

Koepka didn’t have the same early success that Mickelson had. He didn’t win any big events in college or come onto the tour as a can’t-miss kid. He grinded it out on the challenge tour in Europe. What Koepka did do that Mickelson didn’t, however, is win majors quickly.

Koepka won the U.S. Open in 2017 in just his fifth try. He’s already at four career majors before the age when Mickelson won his first. It took Mickelson until his 84th major championship appearance before winning his fifth title; if he gets past Mickelson on Sunday, Koepka would do it in just 28 appearances.

He’ll be the third-youngest player to win five majors, behind only Nicklaus and Woods. Only Jack, Tiger, and Arnie won their fifth major within four years of their first in modern history. That’s the type of history Koepka is pursuing. Already a two-time PGA champion, he would be the first since the event switched to stroke-play to win three titles in a four-year span. Not even Tiger has ever done that in any major.

Tiger won the U.S. Open in 2008 on one leg, overcoming stress fractures and a torn ACL in his left leg. Koepka is dealing with his own injury, a dislocated right kneecap that hasn’t fully healed. He still can’t bend down to mark his ball or read a putt properly. That he’s in this position, just a shot behind in a major, is a testament to his Tiger-like mental toughness and fortitude.

Koepka was three-under on the back-nine on Saturday, rolling in putts from 11 feet on the 10th and 20 feet on 12, to tie Mickelson for the lead. Even though he later called it the worst putting performance of his career, he still shot 70 to finish at six-under and leads the field for the week in Strokes Gained: Approach and is second in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green.

“It just feels good, feels normal. It’s what you’re supposed to do, what you practice for,” Koepka said. “I’m right where I want to be, and we’ll see how tomorrow goes.”

More than a 27-pound silver trophy is at stake for both of them on Sunday. Legacies would change, history made. But first, they have 18 holes to play on a Kiawah Island Ocean Course that won’t make it easy.