Euro Tour challenges golf pros to attempt flop wedge shots over Phil Mickelson silhouette

The European Tour has developed a nice little streak of creating some unique golf challenges that have gone #viral over the past couple years. There was the Rory McIlroy vs. the robot challenge last season, an awesome and ingenious Euro Tour stunt. They’ve also done videos where golfers blasted drives through fruit, shot at clay pigeons, hit a gong in the middle of an Irish lake, and hit balls into a boat in a Scottish firth and from the top of a Dubai hotel onto an island green.

The Scottish Open provides the Euro Tour one of its top fields of the year, as players from both sides of the Atlantic tee it up one week before the Open Championship to get in some links prep. Naturally, they’ve started to set up one of these challenges at this annual stop. Last year, it was having some of the best and most famous players try to rip the longest drive with the Happy Gilmore running start approach. This year, they set up a Mickelson flop shot challenge, an homage to the wedge work of the defending champ at this event.

The inspiration for this, of course, is the several videos we’ve seen over the years where Mickelson takes a full swing and flops a shot over an actual, living human being standing just a couple feet in front of him.

As Mickelson noted, this Royal Aberdeen conditions aren’t exactly ideal for a flop shot. They set it up on the harder British turf on the mowed grass and with no uphill lie. And still, these guys get it up and over and within a foot or two of the target. It’s not as entertaining as Mickelson pulling off those backwards over-the-head wedge shots he’s now doing every year over there, but it’s still pretty cool watching them pull it off.