During the 2016-17 PGA Tour season, Phil Mickelson ranked No. 162 in fairways hit at 55 percent. He's often joked about being one of the worst drivers among the best players in history. Last week's Safeway Open was no different. Lefty hit just 27 percent (!) of fairways and somehow finished third at the event behind Brendan Steele (68 percent) and Tony Finau (50 percent).

At one point on Sunday, Mickelson even joked with fans about actually hitting a fairway.

Incredibly (or maybe not), Mickelson was able to shoot a 12-under 276 that included a weekend in which he hit just five fairways but was 6 under for the two rounds. That's not the good stuff. That's the greatest stuff.

"This is a very skewed golf course to judge on fairways hit," Mickelson said in a very Mickelson-like way. "I hit three beautiful drives on 18, none of them found the fairway. The fairway's 13 yards wide. I paced it. So on a normal Tour course, I would have hit 10, 11 fairways today, I drove it fairly well. But out here I think is a way to kind of protect that they move the fairways in so that they're about half what they normally are."

Regardless, Mickelson eventually fell short of Steele's 15-under mark, but he was in it until the very end, and the T3 is his best finish since finishing second at the 2016 Open Championship to Henrik Stenson. Lefty has actually been playing really well the last few weeks after discovering "something" with his body and getting an assist from his medical team to improve his energy and focus.

"I had a good time today," he said. "It was fun to be in the mix, it was fun to have a chance. It was very difficult conditions. I enjoyed that challenge. 

"It's just easy to see the ball starting on the right line, iron play's back, distance control, putting. The game has just come back and my focus is much better. I'm staying present and hitting the shots, and so I'll get a few things ironed out. I'm going to go to China and obviously I won that twice and hopefully I'll see if I can get a win there."

Mickelson will be at the HSBC Champions two weeks from this week.