Phil Mickelson

Golfer

Known to golf fans as "Lefty," Phil Mickelson has been one of the Professional Golf Association's most successful players since 1992. Mickelson was still an amateur when he won the PGA's Northern Telecom Open in 1991. He turned pro the next year and in 1996 he stepped into the spotlight by winning four tournaments, including the NEC World Series of Golf. That same year Tiger Woods turned pro, and the two began a competitive rivalry that has continued for many years. Quick to smile and willing to play recklessly aggressive shots with his big left-handed swing, Mickelson tends to attract boisterous galleries of fans. His annual failure to win one of golf's four major tournaments (with some calling him "the best player never to win a major") ended in April of 2004, when he won The Masters in Augusta, Georgia. He co-authored (with Donald T. Phillips) a memoir of the occasion, titled One Magical Sunday, in 2005. He won a second major, the PGA Championship, in 2005, and again won the Masters in 2006.

Extra credit: Mickelson and his wife Amy have three children: Amanda (b. 1999), Sophia (b. 2001) and Evan (b. 2003)... He attended Arizona State University... According to the PGA media guide, Mickelson "is right-handed in everything except golf. As his father demonstrated right-handed, he followed along left-handed."

Other golfer's of Mickelson's era include fellow PGA champion John Daly and teen prodigy Michelle Wie.