The most frequent criticism of Phil Mickelson is that he’s fake, a complete phony, nothing but an actor. While Mickelson pretty much drop kicked that theory for eternity with his performance in this week’s Entourage.

Mickelson has proven without a shadow of a doubt that he cannot act. At all.

Even when he’s playing himself.

Heck, Mickelson couldn’t pull off a supporting role in a junior high school play, let alone fool the American public for more than 15 years. He’s unbelievably horrid at this pretend game. And it’s not like Entourage - which may have gone from good to comically bad faster than any TV series in history and certainly any HBO one - has high standards anymore.

But Mickelson managed to live down to them and go even lower. He wore this off-kilter grin on his face his whole appearance (which went on way, way too long). And no, not the usual goofy Phil grin. This one was clearly fake. Mickelson couldn’t have looked more out of place than if he stumbled upon the filming of a Jane Fonda reunion workout video.

Entourage is a show full of golf lovers, from executive producer Mark Wahlberg on down to cast members like Kevin Dillon (Dillon did a BadGolfer.com interview on his love of golf, one in which he takes a shot at Mickelson for Winged Foot). So it’s easy to see why they wanted Phil Mickelson on the show. But they couldn’t find a better way to use him than have him flashing that omnipresent fake grin (again not the real Mickelson goof grin) as the Phil Mickelson teaching pro to super agent Ari Gold’s big studio rival, the one who won’t let Vincent Chase into that ridiculous-sounding firefighters movie?

You have Phil Mickelson playing Phil Mickelson. At least make him as interesting as he is in those Crown Plaza commercials. Have Mickelson gamble away one of his houses. Or let rip with some real moaning gripes about Tiger Woods. Hey, they would have the guts to do it on 30 Rock.

Instead, Entourage manages to waste Mickelson too. Including in one of the worst forced coincidence scenes ever with Gold’s nemesis having a heart attack on the green (with Mickelson in arguably the most pathetic fake sympathy crouch in acting history) so Vince can get into the movie.

About the only thing good about this appearance is that it showed that Jeremy Piven really is as horrible a golfer as everyone says he is. How bad is Piven, who tried to play good golf as Gold? Even I could beat him.

Mickelson might be happy he proved he couldn’t fake his way to a free stick of gum though. Turns out, everyone might know the real Phil after all.

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