Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson: What Does The near future Hold?

Despite not winning a single event and contending in under a handful, the 2010 season was about Tiger Woods. Even though you will find hundreds of other golfers on the PGA Tour?aand thousands a lot more all over the world making their living about the golf course?athe attention Woods receives every week is understandable. The guy has won 14 majors and 71 PGA Tour events. With Woods, we're witnessing the career of arguably the best golfer of all-time. Naturally, we are going to be considering everything he does on and off the golf course.

Not following Woods each and every move will be like not paying attention to Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan in the course of their primes. But with all of the hoopla surrounding Woods for most of the 2010 season, the tumultuous season of this generation's second most profitable player was lost in the shuffle. Phil Mickelson won the Masters in early April, but followed his fourth major championship victory with one of the worst stretches of golf he's experienced in his career. On top of his struggles on the course, Mickelson's wife and mother remained as going by means of grueling cancer treatments whilst Mickelson himself was dealing with a career threatening well being problem.

At the PGA Championship at Whistling Straights, Mickelson announced that he had been suffering from severe joint pain prior to the U.S. Open, coupled with lately been diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis. Any time you win the Masters, the entire year is really a success, particularly for Mickelson whose career is all about significant championships at this point. But remove those four magical days in April and there's cause to be concerned about Mickelson's game, or even more than Woods game. Following his win at Augusta, Mickelson finished second to Rory McIlroy at the Quail Hollow Championship. From that point forward, Mickelson posted just three top-10s within the next seven months, and went 1-3-0 at the Ryder Cup, thus securing him a much undesirable title?athe player using the most losses in U.S. Ryder Cup history. Aside from a T-4 finish at the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, the final seven months of the season had been one extended nightmare for Mickelson.

Like Woods, Mickelson can also be at a career crossroads. Mickelson turned forty-years old final June, and with four majors and 32 PGA Tour wins, he's proper on the cusp of getting into the category of really fantastic players. If Mickelson were to get at six majors and 45 PGA Tour wins during the Tiger Woods era, he could probably be deemed 1 of the top-10 golfers of all-time. Only 11 men would have won far more major championships ,and just seven males would have won a lot more PGA Tour events.

If Mickelson is on the decline and in no way wins another key, properly, then he'd most likely fall under a category the likes of Jimmy Damaret, Raymond Floyd, Billy Casper and Vijay Singh?- which is far cry from being grouped using the likes of Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen. Within the next few years, most of the attention it's still focused on Woods, as he is after a far greater achievement than Mickelson?amost key championship wins of all-time. But, in Mickelson we have yet another player chasing down history. Mickelson has a legitimate chance to push himself right into a new stratosphere in terms of how he'll be remembered in this game.