What a weekend for lefties

July 23 was a good day for lefties.  On that day Brian Harman won the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool and Akshay Bhatia won the Barracuda Championship in Truckee, California.  It was the first time that two lefties won on the PGA Tour on the same day.

It was bound to happen sometime.  One might have expected it to happen when Phil Mickelson won one of his 45 tour titles.  However, there are only a few weeks a year that the PGA Tour holds two events on the same weekend.  In fact, in 2023 there are four such instances.

Harman becomes the 5th lefty to win a major following Bob Charles, Mike Weir, Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson.  Weir's and Watson's wins were at the Masters while Mickelson won each major except for the U.S. Open.  Charles won the Open Championship way back in 1963 making all lefties proud.  Mickelson won his Open 50 years later and now Harman 10 years after Mickelson.

I found an article on the internet listing the lefties to win on the PGA Tour.  Below are the players with their win totals.

Phil Mickelson - 45
Bubba Watson - 12
Mike Weir - 8
Bob Charles - 6
Steve Flesch - 4
Brian Harmon - now 3
Ted Potter Jr. - 2
Russ Cochran - 1
Ernie Gonzalez - 1
Sam Adams - 1
Greg Chalmers - 1
Eric Axley - 1
Cody Gribble - 1
Garrick Higgo - 1
Akshay Bhatia - 1

Mickelson's total of 45 wins is more than the other 14 lefties to win.

Expect this list to grow.  There are more and more good college players that could eventually win on tour.  There are also lefties on the DP World Tour and LPGA Tour that could win with others in the pipeline.

It certainly is a good time to be a lefty and better than when I was in high school and my choice of clubs were Ping or PGA Ryder Cup II's.  (I think I made the wrong choice then as the Pings would be collector items today!)