| schema:articleBody
| - Five-time major winner Phil Mickelson takes inspiration from Tiger Woods winning last year's Masters as the 50-year-old US left-hander tries to become golf's oldest major champion. Ten years after the most recent of his three green jacket triumphs, Mickelson is counting on the forgiving nature of Augusta National to keep him competitive. "This course does not require you to be perfect. You can recover from certain mistakes as long as they are the correct mistakes. I like that you don't have to be perfect," he said. "There's something very spiritual about this place as a golfer, and to have won this tournament means a lot to me. I would love nothing more than to have an opportunity to be in contention and that's my goal." Mickelson would be the oldest winner in majors history, eclipsing the mark set by 48-year-old Julius Boros at the 1968 PGA Championship and the Masters mark of 46 by Jack Nicklaus in 1986. Seeing rival Woods win last year's Masters at age 43 after an epic comeback from back surgery shows Mickelson what's possible at Augusta. "It was one of the greatest feats in the history of sports," Mickelson said. "I thought it was an incredible comeback knowing many of the challenges he has gone through. "I was really happy for him and also I think it provides a little bit of inspiration for a lot of us." Mickelson has won two starts on the 50-and-over Champions Tour "to build his confidence" but struggled in PGA events other than a runner-up WGC Memphis effort and hasn't won a major since the 2013 British Open. "I'm not going into this event thinking about winning," he said. "I'm going into this event thinking about trying to get into contention for the weekend and then hopefully take it from there. "If there's ever a course that I was going to compete on, it would be this one. There's a little bit more forgiveness off the tee and a little bit more demand around the greens." And he has the knowledge learned through trials and errors over 27 Masters starts. "Knowing where to hit it and knowing the shot you're going to be faced with can come into play," he said. "This course gives me as good a chance as any course and I just need to play it aggressively and execute." Woods was asked to envision being an honorary starter with Mickelson in 30 years and said, "Hopefully that will be us one day, and I'll be hitting bombs past him." Mickelson fired back: "Well, he's only 44. He's going to be competing in these events and being in contention for a number of years. "If that was something we got asked to do that would be really cool." js/rcw
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)