July 29, 2013 The 73-year-old, Jack Nicklaus seems to rely high hopes on The Open Champion, Phil Mickelson‘s golf. Himself regarded as all time great, Nicklaus is enormously impressed by Phil Mickleson coming from five shots back at the British Open to clinch his fifth major.
“Phil’s obviously playing awfully well,” Nicklaus said to Sky Sports. “Phil is going to go down in history as one of the great players of the game. There’s no doubt about that.”
In the Golden Bear’s eyes, that makes Mickelson the favorite for the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, which starts Aug. 6. Las Vegas odds have Tiger Woods as a slight favorite over Mickleson.
After Mickelson birdied four of the last six holes to win the Open, Nicklaus says that performance makes him one of the “all-time greats” of the game.
As for his thoughts on Woods, who finished five shots back of Mickelson at the Open after a closing with at 74, Nicklaus says he thinks there are more majors in the future. He stopped short of saying if Woods was capable of breaking his mark of 18. Woods is stuck on 14 majors and hasn’t won one since the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.
“Will he win more majors. I think so. When? I don’t know,” said Nicklaus, who thinks Woods’ problems in the big tournaments, is mental rather than technical.
“I don’t know what is happening between his ears. Each person handles things differently. Winning four times this year, he had to have something working in those tournaments.
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