If Phil Mickelson hasn’t been the player of the year – an honor that, if not lost on the 72nd hole at Winged Foot, may have gone a-glimmering when Tiger Woods pulled out his trusty 2-iron three weeks ago at the British Open – he certainly has been golf’s story of the year.
Between his two-headed driver victory at the Masters, to his comi-tragic loss of a possible Mickel-Slam at the U.S. Open, to his apparent bid to seek membership at every venue hosting a major championship by knocking on their front doors as often as possible, the left-hander has dominated headlines throughout the 2006 season.
But, of course, Mickelson has wanted to monopolize more than newsprint. So it is that he returns once again to The International – one eye on Castle Pines Golf Club, the other on Medinah Country Club outside Chicago, the site of the season’s final major, next week’s PGA Championship.
Although Woods, the world No. 1, continues to avoid the local PGA Tour stop, ostensibly because it interferes with his major championship preparation, Mickelson, ranked No. 2, has done an admirable job of trying to serve two masters. In the spring, he won the BellSouth Classic the week before Augusta; in June, he finished in a tie for 18th at the Barclays Classic before famously handing the U.S. Open to Geoff Ogilvy.
A year ago, Mickelson finished in a tie for 10th in Colorado before winning the PGA at Baltusrol.
Mickelson’s method is “something that worked extremely well for him,” said his caddie, Jim (Bones) MacKay. “I think for him, it’s just nice to get out there and compete, and then a couple of days later, you’re right back into a tournament and it’s a major. That really gets him going.”
Playing the week before a major is just one facet of a system Mickelson has developed along with a support group that includes MacKay, a short-game coach, Dave Pelz, and a full-swing coach, Rick Smith. The most celebrated aspect is the group’s repeated visits to major championship locales. As 2005 ended, with his PGA win, and 2006 began, with his victory at Augusta, Team Mickelson’s travel schedule became almost as scrutinized as Condoleezza Rice’s.
Before the U.S. Open, for example, the group made at least nine or 10 trips to the course, and there was at least one trip across the pond to England and Royal Liverpool before the British Open. (Pelz says Mickelson will get to Medinah at least once before the start of The International.)
It’s not that Mickelson is fond of airports. The idea is to do whatever it takes in his attempt to win majors, and in the process, overcome the one man standing between him and the title of the best player in the world.
“We’re trying to scratch out a quarter of a shot here, or an eighth of a shot there,” Pelz said. “If you start getting better statistically over four rounds, then it can make a difference. Let Tiger play as good as he wants to play, I think Phil can play better, if he can learn to hit it in the fairway a small fraction of the time more than he does now.”
If the labels were to be believed, the idea of Mickelson putting in this kind of time would be shocking. While Vijay Singh is regarded as the uber-worker, beating balls on the driving range until his hands bleed, and Woods is the diligent wonk who overhauls an already major championship-tested swing in order to get even better, Mickelson has been dismissed casually as the talented guy playing with flop shots around, and missing short putts on the green while losing his first 42 majors as a pro.
Now, one gets the feeling Mickelson is a man who wishes he’d at least thought about taping Jack Nicklaus’ major championship records to his wall years ago.
“I don’t think he had a clue as to how much these championships mean to him,” Mickelson’s wife, Amy, said. “I don’t think he thought winning majors was as important as the people around him thought it was, until he won one for the first time. And then, that was like the realization of how much had been bottled up, things he didn’t even know about.
“I honestly think as badly as Phil wanted to win a major, he didn’t think it would define him. He thought his career would be fine without it. But winning one was like a wake-up call, so now it’s the main focus and he’s developed a great system with this team we’ve had for about the last decade. Everybody does it differently, but this works for him.”
Here come the Steelers
Like the NFL, where a team’s successful Super Bowl run using a 3-4 defense will invariably spawn countless imitators the following season, golf can be a highly imitative sport. Even so, it’s highly unlikely Mickelson’s routine will catch on. One reason is that the rank-and-file are too busy trying to make money each week in Moline or Endicott or Duluth to indulge in the luxury of taking weeks off to fly an entourage to Europe for prep work.
Another is that there are still way too many players who merely shrug and say, why bother?
“Different strokes for different folks,” Sean O’Hair said recently. “For me it’s just kind of, like, what’s the point? Obviously the more you play a course the better you’re going to know it, but going over a week in advance, for me, is just not my thing.”
Indeed, apart from the bank accounts, there really isn’t much to choose from between Mickelson and O’Hair. At this point, though, the likable O’Hair has played in five majors – just two more than Mickelson has won. Should his winless streak approach the 40s, perhaps then he’ll do some rethinking.
As the close calls and ultimate failures piled up, Mickelson decided a change was in order. In 20 major championships between 1999 and 2003, Mickelson had 10 top-10 finishes, six times ending up in the top five.
Of those, he trailed the leader by a total of 14 shots. If, as Pelz said, Mickleson could have played a fraction of a stroke better each day, then perhaps he wouldn’t be gathering so many frequent flier miles today.
Or, goes an alternate theory, Mickelson was just really, really unlucky.
“It seems to me, with all due respect to everybody else, the major thing was somewhat inevitable,” MacKay said. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Phil for a number of years. He’s an extremely talented player who gives himself lots of chances to win.
“Look at the guy’s record during that 0-for-42. Granted, he didn’t win a major, but he played some incredibly good golf during that stretch. He was, in my opinion, unlucky not to win (the 1999 U.S. Open) at Pinehurst. He got beat by a guy (Payne Stewart) who did some amazing things the last few holes. Phil played terrifically well at the PGA in Atlanta in 2001. He shot three 66s and a 68 there, but obviously David (Toms) got up and down on the last hole to beat him.”
Numbers game
In 2003, Mickelson had his seventh top-10 finish at the Masters, placing third behind Mike Weir and Len Mattiace. Later, he stumbled in the other three majors, finishing no better than a tie for 23rd, his winless streak in golf’s biggest events reaching its nadir.
Before the onset of the 2004 season, Mickelson spent some time with Pelz. At one point, the Masters came up.
“I asked him how prepared he was,” Pelz recalled. “He said he knew every blade of grass on the course. He’d played 10 majors there, that’s 40 tournament rounds, and then with practice rounds before each of the tournaments, he was probably on the order of 70 to 90 rounds of golf there.”
But, in discussing specifics on the exact shots he hit at Augusta National, Pelz said he realized something – that his approach to playing the course, most notably around the greens, differed greatly from the execution Mickelson was describing.
“I asked him if we could go to Augusta the week before the tournament, when no one was there, and spend time around each green and make sure he was hitting the shots that would be best for his game there,” Pelz said. “About a month before the tournament, he finally said, ‘OK, since I haven’t had much success in majors, we’ll try it your way.’
“So we went a week early, and we found that, lo and behold, when he tried this shot versus that shot, versus another shot from the same position, one of them was clearly better in terms of getting it up and down the highest percentage of the time.”
The process it took to determine that made Singh and Woods look like Jay and Silent Bob. Mickelson and Pelz were on the course for two straight days, each time spending more than 12 hours working along side of and on the greens. How would you play a shot from this lie? What would you do if you were faced with this problem?
“It didn’t do much for his golf game at all, but it did change his perspective,” Pelz said. “And once he learned the numbers (percentages) – when he went back the next week, he was practicing and preparing to hit different shots from different places on the course than he had ever hit before.”
Playing with Chris DiMarco in the final group on the final day, Mickelson finally broke through, winning his first major by one stroke. In the aftermath, Pelz said, the player made a pronouncement.
“He said, ‘OK, you understand now that there’s a commitment here. It was your idea to do this, so we’re going to do it for every major from now on,”‘ Pelz said. “And we have. He’s 3-for-11 since, and that’s a lot better than 0-for-42.”
Do I know you?
When Woods won the British Open late last month, it moved him into a tie with Mickelson, each with three majors since the start of the 2004 season. But the thing is, the world’s No. 2 could very easily be on top in their personal arms race. After winning his first Masters, Mickelson finished second, third and sixth in that season’s U.S. and British Opens and the PGA, trailing the eventual winners by a total of five shots. And, of course, there was this year’s U.S. Open.
Three weeks after Winged Foot, Mickelson returned to action at the Western Open outside Chicago. In a pretournament media session, he openly encouraged questions and joked about his meltdown in New York. But Mickelson was clearly looking ahead to the point where, after shooting a 74 in the second round, he admitted that he would spend the rest of the weekend working on shots he’d need for the British Open two weeks later.
It’s not like he left the premises. The galleries still came out in droves to follow him over the last two rounds, but some might find the wanderlust a little impolite. But that list wouldn’t include tournament directors at places like the BellSouth Classic or The International, where, in the continued absence of Woods, they fall onto their knees every night to thank their lucky stars for Mickelson’s presence.
“He’s trying to peak for five tournaments every year, to prepare for and optimize his game for the four majors and the Players Championship,” Pelz said. “Within the scope of that, you try to win every other tournament you play in. He was absolutely preparing for Augusta when he played at the BellSouth this year.
“In going to Hoylake the week before, we learned some of the shots he was going to have to hit, but I guarantee he was trying to hit every shot at the Western. It’s not like he was saying, ‘I’m going to hit this shot here at the Western because it’s the same shot I’m going to have to hit at Hoylake, but I’m not going to hit it well here.”‘
Mickelson finished in a tie for 15th at the British, afterward saying how much he was looking forward to preparing for the season’s final major. So is the golf world. All that hangs in the balance is the player of the year award, which would be a first for Mickelson (Singh won in 2004), and with it, an offseason filled with the anticipation of a battle royal for No. 1 in 2007.
Should Mickelson indeed repeat, you might find yourself in an Augusta, Ga., ice cream shop some sunny January day, thinking that the guy at the counter looked awfully familiar.
Chances are, you’d be right.
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
