Photo: © David Cannon /Allsport |
| A frustrated Phil Mickelson missing a putt on the 71st hole of the 1999 U.S. Open. |
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The worst of times? Well, there was the 1999 U.S. Open, when he stood on the final green watching Payne Stewart have all sorts of problems with his first and second shots. If Stewart had bogeyed the hole - and that looked eminently possible - then Mickelson goes into a playoff. But Stewart didn't, getting the ball up onto the green with a little flip shot, then sinking his par putt from 15 feet.
Two years later, we do it all over again at the PGA Championship in Atlanta. Mickelson is on the green at the par-5 18th hole, waiting for David Toms to hit his third shot from the fairway. Toms does, then sinks a 12-foot birdie putt. Oops!
Remember the U.S. Open of 2004 at Shinnecock? Mickelson had carefully, meticulously worked his way to the top when disaster struck at the 71st hole. There he made double bogey with a three-putt from 5 feet, and neither of the two short misses were struck haphazardly. But mark it down as another body blow, Retief Goosen sneaking off with Phil's trophy.
Now - please don't forget the flip side of the coin, the two Masters championships and the PGA victory. That's three majors in the last three years. But no one understands as does Phil Mickelson what a sickening word "almost" is. After all, in his entire 15-year career, he has almost as many "almosts" as does Greg Norman.
One wonders, though, after last week's awesome performance, if Phil is ready to leap up to another rung. He has driven the ball very well all season, even though he missed the cut at Phoenix and had a multitude of troubles with his irons and putter in his two other starts. But at Pebble, Mickelson hit 90 percent of the fairways. It was the driver, remember, which cost him the Open last year.
Photo: © Reuters/WireImage |
| Phil Mickelson was on fire on Sunday at Pebble Beach. |
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Now he has a new club, and he has quickly fallen in love with it. "I have never driven it as well as I'm driving it right now," he says. "I have never had this type of feeling on the tee box, knowing that it's going to be in the fairway and not having to worry about it."
And this - "I was looking at my swing as opposed to both the swing and driver. Now, I have a driver that has a whole different center of gravity, moment of inertia, all that technical stuff. My misses are very minuscule now - not because of anything improved in my swing, but the club now just performs the way I expect."
If you had a golf tee for every time you heard a player say something similar, you would have enough wood to build a house. But Mickelson may be a different one. No, he hasn't yet ascended to the level of a Tiger Woods - not nearly. He was, however, well on the way to being the second-best player on the planet last year when he hit the quicksand in the U.S. Open. His driver was the culprit, and if he indeed has that problem covered, there's no reason why he shouldn't resume his position in golf's pecking order.
Now, you have to wonder if this driver will meet the same fate as the two drivers Mickelson used at the Masters last year - which, incidentally, Mickelson won. Is it the arrow, or is it the Indian? Whatever - just know that he now has a club with which he feels very comfortable. And 'feeling comfortable' is where it all begins when you are trying to put the danged ball in the fairway.
Photo: © Reuters/WireImage | | Phil Mickelson drove the ball in the right place during the AT&T. |
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"I drove it awful all four days (at last year's Open), which is almost unheard of to be in contention in the Open," Mickelson confessed. "That's when I realized I needed to fix my driving. And I never have driven it as well as I'm driving it now. It's very easy because I have learned a lot about my driver and my swing. And I think I'm going to be a better driver of the golf ball the rest of my career. At least that's my goal."
Give instructor Rick Smith some of the credit - he had Mickelson practicing for 12 hours a day in the off-season, trying to get the clubface of the driver squared up a fraction of a second earlier to eliminate the wayward shot off to the left. After all, Mickelson had had enough of those shots at the 2006 Open to make him quit the game if something didn't change.
"I really believe that the former presidents of the USGA were looking down and said, 'No one should win the Open hitting 2 of 14 fairways,'" Mickelson said last month. He could have a brilliant putting tournament - which he did. He could have a brilliant scrambling tournament - which he did. But Mickelson knew that it was only a matter of time before his game came crashing down, all around his driver. And - it did.
Has he fixed it? At least for the time being, he has. Will his fix last? Who knows - but if it does, Mickelson would be at least on the same page as Tiger.
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