News
At 48, Phil Mickelson’s driver swing speed rises 6 mph “overnight.” He’s outdriving some of the longest hitters on Tour
Phil Mickelson is enjoying one of the best starts he’s ever had to a year, finishing runner-up at the Desert Classic before winning emphatically on Sunday at the AT&T Pro-Am. At 48, most people would expect Mickelson to be slowing down, but that certainly isn’t the case with Lefty, and one element of the 44-time PGA Tour winner’s game that is even picking up is his numbers with the driver.
Mickelson’s swing speed with his driver in 2019 has left many dumbfounded. On our forums, our members have been discussing Lefty’s driver swing speed numbers at length, his ball speed are reaching as high as the mid 180s, and while speaking at the Desert Classic earlier this year, Mickelson stated that his swing speed jumped a considerable 6 mph overnight.
“So at the end of last year, even though I played poorly, I had something happen where it seemed like overnight. It had really been a year in the works, where my driver speed, it shot up 5, 6 miles an hour, which rarely ever happens to anybody, yet alone somebody in their late 40s.”
As you would expect, the significant jump has led to spectacular results. With his 49th birthday fast approaching, Mickelson turned up at his first event of the year at the Desert Classic and led the field for driving distance. Lefty averaged a driving distance of 318.2 yards that week, beating off the likes of Jon Rahm and Justin Rose.
Then at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, even though he missed the cut, Mickelson had an average driving distance of 318.8 yards, over 10 yards more than Justin Thomas that week, one of the longest hitters in the game.
Explaining his reasoning behind the jump in numbers, Mickelson, who has been a user of the SuperSpeed Golf Training System in the past, credited both biometric swing studies and added time spent in the gym
“It was nine months of hard work, and then overnight I was swinging 6 miles an hour faster. … It was biometric swing studies of my swing, taking weaknesses, making them strengths. It was time in the gym. It was a whole workout process. It’s been a lot of work, but days like this make it worthwhile.”
On the equipment front, Mickelson is gaming Callaway’s Rogue Sub Zero Driver (9 degrees), just as he did throughout 2018. His Project X HZRDUS T1100 shaft is the same one which Lefty utilized in his driver for all of 2018, which adds substance to Mickelson’s claim that the added speed has been “a year in the works”, while the added time in the gym is unlikely to have done Lefty’s swing speed any harm.
The 48-year-old sat fifth this season for driving distance on the PGA Tour before four rounds at a soggy and cold AT&T Pro-Am dropped him down to T24, and his impressive start distance and swing speed wise mirrors that of last year’s hot out of the gate start by Tiger Woods. The 14-time major champ was second on the PGA Tour for average clubhead speed after the first half of 2018, clocking in at an average speed of 122.04 mph. That number eventually dropped to 120.24mph by the end of the season, but the fact that a 43-year-old could achieve those numbers after returning from spinal fusion surgery was a shock to almost all golf fans.
Now, it’s Mickelson’s turn to stun the golfing world. The 48-year-old’s clubhead speed to begin the new season is 120.92 mph, up from an average of 116.48 mph in the 2017/18 wraparound season. With the added driver swing speed, Mickelson has become once again, for the moment at least, one of the longest hitters off the tee in the game.
Whether Mickelson can keep these numbers this high throughout the year remains to be seen, as does a specific reason behind such a significant jump. But already at the AT&T Pro-Am, the 44-time winner on the PGA Tour has cashed in on those numbers. With a U.S. Open still to come at the site of that victory, Mickelson will undoubtedly, with his swing speed through the roof, be bullish on his chances of completing the career grand slam in 2019.
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Tour Photo Galleries
Photos from the 2024 RBC Heritage
GolfWRX is on site this week at Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island for the RBC Heritage. Plenty of golfers who competed in the Masters last week will be making the quick turnaround in the Lowcountry of South Carolina as the Heritage is again one of the Tour’s Signature Events.
We have general albums for you to check out, as well as plenty of WITBs — including Justin Thomas and Justin Rose.
We’ll continue to update as more photos flow in from SC.
Check out links to all our photos, below.
General Albums
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Monday #1
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Monday #2
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Tuesday #1
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Tuesday #2
WITB Albums
- Justin Thomas – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Justin Rose – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Chandler Phillips – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Nick Dunlap – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Thomas Detry – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Austin Eckroat – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Xander Schauffele – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Jason Day – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Will Zalatoris – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Patrick Cantlay – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Ludvig Aberg – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Collin Morikawa – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Sam Burns – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Stephen Jaeger – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
Pullout Albums
- Wyndham Clark’s Odyssey putter – 2024 RBC Heritage
- JT’s new Cameron putter – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Justin Thomas testing new Titleist 2 wood – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Cameron putters – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Odyssey putter with triple track alignment aid – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Scotty Cameron The Blk Box putting alignment aid/training aid – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Cameron putter – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Odyssey Ai One Eleven T putters – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Christian Bezuidenhout – testing new Callaway Ti 340 mini driver – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Rory McIlroy testing the new TaylorMade BRNR Mini Driver Copper – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Xander Schauffele testing the Callaway Ti 340 mini driver & the DUW – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Byeong Hun An, two new L.A.B. Golf putter builds with “T” alignment – 2024 RBC Heritage
See what GolfWRXers are saying and join the discussion in the forums.
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Morning 9: Aberg: I want to be No. 1 | Rory’s management blasts ‘fake news’ reports
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~j~
Feb 13, 2019 at 10:02 am
Distance was never his problem. Finding it in the bushes was.
Vas
Feb 13, 2019 at 9:49 am
Is it wrong of me for wanting Phil to credit deer antler spray?
Tyler Durden
Feb 13, 2019 at 1:50 am
This is not some phenomenon. Superspeed Golf has been saying this happens since they debuted their product
Tiger Lies
Feb 12, 2019 at 7:35 pm
Left the circle, right the circle! You must use pow’a from inside DanielPickleson! Yeah, I’m thinkin’ driver faces are gettin’ juiced to draw as much interest back to the game as possible. I mean $550 plus dolla’s for off the rack drivers?!! Really!
Tom
Feb 12, 2019 at 5:06 pm
“It’s jailbreak man, that technology is fantastic”…..Uncle Rico added 50 yards to his drives with it!” If only the coach had played him in the Paris Ryder Cup!
Tiger Noods
Feb 12, 2019 at 5:01 pm
Woods is 43, not 44.
15th Club
Feb 12, 2019 at 12:52 pm
I thought that I heard Ian Baker-Finch say during the Saturday telecast at Pebble that Phil had been making a lot of use of “the Speed Stik.” I am quite certain that IBF used those words, and I found it surprising since the network announcers are usually very careful about product endorsements within a broadcast.
Was IBF mistaken? Did he say, “the Speed Stik” when he meant “SuperSpeed System”? Did I mis-hear him? I don’t think I did, but I think IBF misspoke, because the two things (Speed Stik and SuperSpeed) are similar but not the same.
I am thankful for this story, and I trust that it is correct about Phil’s use of SuperSpeed. Anybody know more about what I heard on the telecast? I am not aware of IBF having product deals with either of the swing-training systems.
The dude
Feb 13, 2019 at 3:28 am
“Anybody know more about what I heard??”…
….sorry dude….hard to say
-mush
DS
Feb 13, 2019 at 6:11 pm
I heard what you heard. It was when he was whipping his driver through the air prior to a tee shot.
SuperSpeed Golf
Feb 14, 2019 at 7:30 pm
Ian said speed sticks referring to SuperSpeed on the broadcast. We do not pay any players or broadcasters to use our product.
Thanks!
Smee
Feb 12, 2019 at 11:24 am
“beating off the likes of Jon Rahm and Justin Rose”
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Nice to see your J degree working for you.
Distance Compression Dude
Feb 12, 2019 at 12:26 pm
LMFAO…Savage
Jack
Feb 12, 2019 at 5:17 pm
Work on your hand speed, and the clubhead speed will follow.
Tee-Bone
Feb 13, 2019 at 12:22 pm
And those boys game pretty stiff shafts.
X
Feb 12, 2019 at 10:49 am
So it’s not just the club? lol
Gunter Eisenberg
Feb 12, 2019 at 10:33 am
Sam Snead 2.0.
salbo
Feb 12, 2019 at 9:43 am
Is this Gianni dude some disco holdout from the 70s?
JP
Feb 12, 2019 at 9:18 am
The d man strength has kicked in.
.
Doesn’t everyone have a Grandpa that crushes handshakes? This explains it. Haha
JP
Feb 12, 2019 at 9:06 pm
*That was “old man strength”. Small phone typo