Some advice shapes how one perceives a person. It applies to Kevin Kisner, who walked into his Presidents Cup debut in 2017 after telling organizers he did not want to be paired with Phil Mickelson. Team USA captain Steve Stricker sent him out with Mickelson anyway, and the pairing produced a story Kisner still tells nine years later, because one piece of advice from Mickelson completely changed how he looked at the game.
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Speaking on the Foreplay Podcast, Kisner shared that he and Mickelson had split duties for the alternate shot match in 2017. They decided Mickelson would handle most of the approach shots, while Kisner would take care of the tee shots and the putting. However, in a turn of events, six or eight holes in, Kisner had not made a single putt. In fact, he left one or two short of the hole. That is when Mickelson decided to pull him aside.
“I’ll never forget at Liberty National, my first cup team, I played with Phil, and I don’t know if I’ve told this story on this podcast or not yet this year, but we’re going along, and we had set the alternate shot up to where I’m going to do most of the putting…And he grabbed me off the seventh or eighth green, and he put his arm around me, and he goes, ‘Do not leave another putt short.'” He said, If you knock them five feet by, it might take me some time, but I will make every one of those mo*********rs. So knock it by the hole. And dude, I started wrecking these balls.”
Almost like Mickelson had planned it, the strategy held up under real pressure. In their Saturday foursomes match against Vegas and Grillo, with the match tied, Mickelson stuffed approach shots on the 15th and 17th holes. Kisner, on the other hand, converted both birdie putts to close out 2 & 1. Their pairing gave Mickelson his 25th Presidents Cup victory, setting a new record for the event. Only Dustin Johnson scored more points than Mickelson that week, as the Americans routed the International side 19-11.
Beyond the pairing itself, Kisner has carried that lesson into his own role as the senior in the team room. He said he used the same approach with Cameron Young and Tony Finau, when neither was known for their putting. When he played with them at the Presidents Cup, he told them to attack their putts on fast Bermuda greens without fear, promising to clean up anything that ran by, just as Mickelson did for him.
In fact, their relationship did not start at Liberty National. Ahead of that 2017 pairing, Kisner told reporters he and Mickelson already played golf together regularly and had built their bond around trash-talking each other and their opponents. After the round, Kisner said plainly that he loved being Mickelson’s partner and enjoyed the atmosphere the two of them created on the course.
Even Phil Mickelson was just as complimentary about his partner afterwards. “My man played so well all day. We’ve had so much fun, and to close out with that shot feels absolutely spectacular,” he said after Saturday’s win at the Liberty National.
Since moving into broadcasting, Kisner and Mickelson have traded jabs on social media. Most recently, in 2025, Kisner teased Mickelson over a past prediction that Scottie Scheffler would not win a PGA Tour title before that year’s Ryder Cup, a call Scheffler went on to prove wrong many times over.
Kisner has told a separate story about that pairing, too. In a different appearance, on the Smylie Show podcast, he explained that his pairing with Mickelson had not come from analytics or course fit at all. According to Kisner, Mickelson had consulted an astrologer who rated Kisner’s energy level the highest on either team and passed the recommendation to Stricker. That same astrologer also told Mickelson to have Kisner face him on every shot and stick his belly out to draw off that energy. It’s indeed a bizarre prediction, but it did come true.
For now, Kevin Kisner is not on this year’s U.S. team, but he remains a part of the Presidents Cup conversation as the NBC lead analyst. He has been outspoken about the 2026 edition heading to Medinah Country Club, questioning whether the Americans are handing the international side an edge by playing a course redesigned by their opposing captain.