TROON, Scotland — Phil Mickelson the Millennial?
Not exactly, but the 54-year-old golf star was spotted sporting golf joggers favoured by players half his age at Royal Troon this week.
But it wasn’t by choice.
Mickelson posted a photo to his social media account showing him modelling the athleisure-wear and, by the sounds of it, the six-time major champ didn’t exactly hate it.
“As an unfashionable 54 year old, I never thought I could pull off wearing joggers,” he wrote. “Guess I was wrong. Thank you @GrantHorvatGolf we both won.”
Mickelson was referring to a bet he lost with YouTube celebrity golfer Grant Horvat that saw him paying his debt by wearing joggers to the Open Championship. If Mickelson had won, Horvat would have been on the hook to buy a year’s worth of Mickelson’s Wellness coffee for a viewer.
Spotting the YouTuber five strokes, Mickelson lost a match that appeared on both men’s social media channel.
Mickelson’s YouTube channel began in 2022 and is called Phil Mickelson and the HyFlyers. It has 71,000 subscribers.
Horvat is one of the most popular YouTube golf personalities with 724,000 subscribers to his decade-old channel.
The video featuring the match has been viewed 1.8 million times across the two channels.
Mickelson is the 2013 Open Champion and was runner-up to Henrik Stenson in 2016 here at Royal Troon in one of the greatest duels in major championship history. Mickelson shot a 65 that day, but was bested by Stenson’s Sunday 63 as the pair ran away from the rest of the field. Mickelson finished 11 strokes clear of third place.
Mickelson left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf two years ago and has become one of the sport’s most polarizing figures.