Suddenly, Golf World Is Taking on a Leftward Tilt

The first left-hander to win the PGA Championship? That’s Phil Mickelson, who took a congratulatory phone call from former President George H.W. Bush, then sat back and watched the numbers roll in.

He moved past the $2-million mark in career money earned at the PGA Championship and is now at $2.37 million. Mickelson also passed the $5-million plateau in earnings this year with Monday’s $1.17-million winner’s share, for a total of $5,568,775.

Along with Vijay Singh and Tiger Woods, he has won four times this year. Mickelson also moved up in the official world ranking, from fourth to third, supplanting Ernie Els.

Mickelson is 20th on the PGA Tour career victory list with 27.

His next tournament is next week at the NEC in Akron, Ohio, where he plans to show up Wednesday since there is no obligatory pro-am.

After that, it’s a three-week vacation with his family.

“We’re just going to head out for a week and spend a little bit of time and just kind of be together.”

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Overnight ratings for CBS’ shortened final-round coverage Sunday was still up 20% to a 5.9 over last year’s 4.9. The two-day weekend average earned an overnight rating of 5.2, up 27% from last year’s 4.1.

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Mickelson’s victory earned him a place in the off-season PGA Grand Slam of Golf, which features the year’s major winners. The event will be played at Poipou Bay Golf Course in Hawaii Nov. 22-23.

Joining Mickelson will be Woods, the Masters and British Open champion, and Michael Campbell, the U.S. Open champion. Completing the field is Retief Goosen, who led a points list of other players for their performances in the majors.

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For the record, Mickelson is now 15-5 when leading or sharing the lead at the 54-hole mark -- and 2-0 in majors: the 2004 Masters and now the PGA Championship.

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Only two holes at the 7,392-yard par-70 Baltusrol Golf Club layout yielded a stroke average under par for the tournament. The 430-yard par-four 14th averaged 3.964 and the 554-yard par-five 18th played to an average of 4.526.

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It was quick day for Lee Westwood. When play was suspended Sunday, he was on the 18th green and had a 10-foot putt to complete his round. Westwood sent the rest of his clubs on to Akron for this week’s tournament and came back out Monday with just his putter. He made the putt for a birdie and was done. Westwood’s 75 tied him for 17th.

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The qualifiers for next month’s Presidents Cup teams were determined Monday based on points earned through the PGA Championship. Woods and Singh, the only players to finish in the top 10 of all four majors this year, topped the lists.

Joining Woods on the U.S. team will be, in the order of points earned, Mickelson, David Toms, Kenny Perry, Chris DiMarco, Jim Furyk, Fred Funk, Stewart Cink, Davis Love III and Scott Verplank.

On the International team, Singh will be joined by Goosen, Adam Scott, Angel Cabrera, Tim Clark, Campbell, Stuart Appleby, Mike Weir, Nick O’Hern and Mark Hensby.

U.S. captain Jack Nicklaus and International captain Gary Player each had two wild-card selections to round out their 12-man rosters. Nicklaus went with Justin Leonard and Fred Couples while Player chose Australia’s Peter Lonard and South Africa’s Trevor Immelman.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.