Phil Mickelson enjoys one more shining moment at the PGA Championship

Phil Mickelson has heard he’s too old, that the competitive part of his career was done. He put those doubts to rest this week at Kiawah Island.

Phil Mickelson already has a bronze plaque hanging in the hallowed halls of the World Golf Hall of Fame. He already had five major championships, his place in golf history already secured. But the lasting image of his career, one that extends back more than 30 years, before many of the players he’s competing against were even born, will be what happened walking up the 18th fairway on Sunday at Kiawah Island.

First came the leap, his jump into the air after making the putt that made him a major champion at the 2004 Masters. Now he has the walk, surrounded by his legion of fans, as he prepared to do what didn’t seem possible: win the PGA Championship and his sixth major championship.

Mickelson is now in elite company. He’s the 14th player in PGA Tour history with six majors. A little more than three weeks before his 51st birthday, he’s the oldest player to win a major. He did it by playing with the freedom of a young man and the knowledge and experience honed over three-plus decades on tour.

Mickelson didn’t get ahead of himself this week at the PGA Championship. He slowed down, made sure to control his breathing, played with patience. When has that ever been said about the notoriously free-wheeling Mickelson? He also played with power and precision, outdriving competitors half his age. His drive on the par-five 16th on Sunday was the longest of any player on that hole this week.

He finished at six-under for the tournament, two shots ahead of Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen. Koepka, himself a four-time major champion, was just eight months old when Mickelson won his first PGA Tour title. Mickelson is old enough to be the father of some of the other players. But Father Time didn’t have anything on him this week.

What makes this win so special isn’t that Mickelson added to his major championship collection. It’s that it no longer seemed possible for him. Mickelson hadn’t contended in a major in nearly five years. He has just two wins on tour over the last eight years, his last major coming in 2013. His career—and what a career it was—seemed to be winding down. He would never get another opportunity like this.

But Mickelson never thought he was done winning. The gallery at Kiawah Island, who surrounded him as he walked up to the green to finish his round, the scene more closely resembling a rock concert than a golf tournament. Tiger Woods had such a moment two years ago at the Masters. Jack Nicklaus had it in 1986. Three legends, pulling out one last special moment to add to their already-storied legacy.

“Certainly one of the moments I’ll cherish my entire life,” Mickelson said. “I don’t know how to describe the feeling of excitement and fulfillment and accomplishment to do something of this magnitude when very few people thought that I could.”

Mickelson now out to prove he can still win more tournaments

Mickelson now faces a pressing question: is this the last, best moment he’ll have, or has he found something that will allow him to compete against the game’s best for years to come. Even he doesn’t know for sure.

“So it’s very possible that this is the last tournament I ever win. Like, if I’m being realistic. But it’s also very possible that I may have had a little bit of a breakthrough in some of my focus and maybe I go on a little bit of a run, I don’t know,” he said.

“But the point is that there’s no reason why I or anybody else can’t do it at a later age. It just takes a little bit more work.”

Golf was waiting for a moment just like this, with the galleries returning after nearly a year of empty courses. Imagine if Mickelson won last year and there were no fans to accompany him down the 18th fairway. They were there for him all along because they recognized they were witnessing something historic: a golf legend, perhaps long past his prime, but able to summon a little bit of magic once again.

For one week, at least. Whatever happens the remainder of Mickelson’s career, he’ll always have this PGA Championship. It is now part of his aura, his legend, and a fitting cap to a career filled with so many highs but also so many lows.

That Hall of Fame plaque needs to be updated now.