Phil Mickelson blasts USGA for potential rule limiting the length of drivers

Phil Mickelson rekindled an old feud through a new medium (for him) on Friday during the second round of the BMW Championship. Mickelson’s, ahem, antagonistic relationship with the USGA is both well-documented and long-lasting, and he perpetuated it Friday when he tweeted his disdain for a potential rule change as it relates to the driver. 

The USGA is apparently going to be limiting the length of all drivers to 46 inches, and Mickelson — who has often used a driver longer than 46 inches — is extremely displeased.

There is a lot to unwind here, but Mickelson’s disdain makes sense when you consider the longer driver Mickelson has gone to in recent years and how it has allowed him to gain so much distance into his 50s (he’s currently 54th on the PGA Tour in driving distance, ahead of Viktor Hovland and Tommy Fleetwood).

The USGA has been eyeing a reigning in of how far the golf ball is traveling for a while now, and they floated the idea of limiting driver length earlier this year. This is one of 100 ways to limit distance, but according to Mickelson, it’s a path that is apparently imminent. The USGA has not officially announced anything yet.

Interestingly, Mickelson predicted the opposite would happen last fall at the 2020 Masters in November. Of course, the USGA (and R&A) had not proposed their shorter driver rule at that time, but here’s what Mickelson had to say.

“Ultimately, it might be five years, 10 years, 15 years, but every driver will be standard at 48 inches,” said Mickelson. “And then you’ll have a weak driver, kind of a 2‑wood, if you will, which is kind of what I’ve gone to now. For me, it’s actually really good in that I’ve always used length of swing and leverage to create speed rather than a violent, physical, rotational force. I’ve actually quieted my body down a little bit as I try to create more speed with a bigger, longer arc.

“So transitioning to a longer driver is not that much more difficult because it’s just a timing issue. I’m able to quiet … my body down to let the club catch up and swing on a much bigger, wider arc. It’s more consistent with my swing than, say, some of the others, the young guys that are so physically strong and able to create speed just through a quick turn and rotation. I think for some of those guys, it might be a little bit more difficult to get the timing down, but eventually they are going to do it and they are going to hit the ball even farther.”

So Mickelson is frustrated because this rule could prohibit him from maintaining his length in the future. He wants to leverage a literal longer driver to get as much length off the tee as possible (he insinuated this in his tweet as well). While limiting distance, at least in theory, helps longer players (like Mickelson), doing it in this particular way probably hurts him because of what he was saying about how he uses a longer swing to generate speed.

Again, this is nothing new for Mickelson, who has criticized the USGA for a litany of issues over the last three decades. Maybe the biggest recent brouhaha between him and the organization that creates the rules and runs the U.S. Open — where Mickelson has finished runner-up a staggering six times — came back in 2018 at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock. Lefty hit a moving golf ball on the green (on purpose!) but was allowed to stay in the tournament after taking a two-stroke penalty following his round. 

This frustrated tweet is obviously not even close to that level, but it’s another tally mark in runs Mickelson has taken at the organization that runs the single tournament that has thus eluded him over the course of his spectacular career. His points have merit, but I’m not sure the USGA is buying them. New USGA CEO Mike Whan seems intent working toward a solution for the distance problem, and this could be one step toward that seems like it’s going to happen with or without Mickelson’s approval.