Phil Mickelson is the Madonna of the PGA Tour, says Notah Begay

Phil Mickelson is such a master at revamping his game and convincing himself and others that he can achieve goals that may seem unattainable as a 40-something on the PGA Tour, that he reminds Notah Begay III of a certain athletic pop singer who’s had more personas than top-selling albums.

“I do think players can reinvent themselves. They have to because it’s a way to maintain a certain type of motivational focus that is required to play the game at its highest level,” Golf Channel analyst Begay said during a pre-U.S. Open teleconference on Wednesday. “The best person at that, besides Madonna, is not Jennifer Lopez, is Phil Mickelson.”

Wait, what? THE multi-hyphenated Madonna, who overhauls her image and her music as often as Phil does his equipment and putting stroke? Yep.

Mickelson “will convince you by his interviews, saying, ‘Wow, my body’s different, my swing’s different, my putting’s different,’” Tiger Woods’ close friend said during a discussion about the mental and physical state of the game of the former world No. 1.

“It’s always something and he’ll keep telling you and telling you and telling himself in interviews to the point where he convinces himself this is going to get him to that next level,” Begay said about Mickelson, 44, who went all low-carb Paleo over the offseason in an effort to lose weight and boost his swing speed.

“I think he’s wonderful at it and I think sometimes people criticize him for it but it’s either take that type of attitude, where you’re trying to convince yourself that you can do things that may be aren’t necessarily all that reasonable, or the other type, where you just start telling yourself you can’t do things.”

The tour is virtually littered with the bodies of golfers -- past and present -- who fail to see the glass as half-full, Begay contended.

“There’s a lot of players on the PGA Tour that tell themselves they can’t do things and you know what?” Begay asked rhetorically. “They usually don’t.”

That Lefty-Madonna parallel, though.

We imagine the five-time major champion, who remade himself into a links player to win the 2013 British Open, would be as amused as we were by Begay matching him up with the “chameleon of pop,” who Joe D’Angelo keenly observed “shed her skin” so many times over her long career to “adapt to the times.”

We don’t expect Mickelson to show up at Chambers Bay in Madonna-like-leather chaps or sporting black fishnet fingerless golf gloves (those threads are definitely not in Phil’s script). But the popular winner of 42 tour events certainly hopes he has rebuilt his game from that of a player with just one top-10 finish in 2014 and a T65 at last week’s Memorial, to one who ends his national championship runner-up streak and completes the career grand slam.

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