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Phil Mickelson makes his third start of the 2019/20 PGA Tour season in The CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges in Korea this week – and it could be a very significant milestone in his career.

Should results conspire against him, the five-time major champion could fall outside the top-50 on the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time in almost 26 YEARS!

Mickelson, 49, has been a constant in the upper echelons of the standings since he jumped from 51st to 47th on December 5, 1993. 

After an indifferent year, he’s back in 47th place again going into this week, having started 2019 ranked 33rd.

To date, Mickelson has spent an incredible 1,351 consecutive weeks inside the world’s top 50. A remarkable 271 of those have been spent at No.2 on the rankings – more than five years! Perhaps surprisingly, he never got to the top spot.

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He has spent 787 weeks inside the top-10 – that’s over 15 years – and 1,111 weeks (in excess of 21 years) inside the top-20.

Talk about longevity.

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The last time he was ranked outside the world’s top-50, he was an unmarried 23-year-old, with three PGA Tour wins and seven major starts to his name, who had career earnings of $800,449.

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Now, he’s a 49-year-old married father of three, who has won 44 times on the PGA Tour and made 108 starts in the majors, winning five of them. His career earnings now? A colossal $90,613,345 – the second biggest haul in the history of the circuit.

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Here are some other things facts from the last time Phil Mickelson wasn’t in the world’s top-50…

• Tiger Woods was 17-years-old and had never played in a major.

• Rory McIlroy was four.

• Brooks Koepka was three.

• Nick Faldo was world No.1.

• Jim Gallagher Jnr was the most recent winner on the PGA Tour.

• Colin Montgomerie had just won the fourth of his 31 European Tour titles.

• Bill Clinton was less than a year into his first term as US president.

• John Major was the British Prime Minister.

• Meat Loaf was at No.1 in the UK singles chart with I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).

Addams Family Values was the No.1 film at the cinema.

• Gianluigi Lentini was the most expensive footballer in the world,
having been transferred from Torino to AC Milan for £13million the
previous year.

Friends was still just under a year away from airing on television for the first time.

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