Latest victory among most important for Mickelson
We never saw it coming. Really.
Of course, we should have. After all, a victory from one of the top-ranked players in the field, at a venue on which he already owns two career wins, and with 29 career PGA Tour titles already to his credit, shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
And yet, there was no reason to think Phil Mickelson would even contend at this week's AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, let alone win the thing. He was coming off a missed cut at the FBR Open, preceded by a T-51 at the Buick Invitational and a T-45 at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Not exactly the stuff of a soon-to-be champion.
As the Weekly 18 begins, this latest victory from Lefty was among his greatest, at least in terms of where it ranks in importance.
 |
The 2004 Masters will forever live as the most important of Phil Mickelson's 30 career titles. It helped absolve him of that pesky Best Player To Have Never Won A Major label and validated his standing among golf's elite players.
Though Mickelson has added two major championships to his resume since then, his win at the AT&T on Sunday now stands as the second-most vital victory of his storied career. That's right, it's more important than his major wins at the '05 PGA Championship and '06 Masters, more important than his first career win at the '91 Northern Telecom Open, more important than any of his 28 career titles, save for that initial green jacket winner.
With the win, Mickelson silenced the doubters, those critical about both his mental and physical states at the beginning of this season.
There were some who predicted that following his final-hole double-bogey at Winged Foot to lose last year's U.S. Open he would never be the same player, never be able to close out another victory without memories of that collapse at the forefront of his mind.
There were others who thought his increased workout regimen -- he reportedly lost weight and added muscle in the offseason -- would require finding a new swing for his new body, a predicament that could preclude him from finding success for many months.
"I was hoping to play like this the first couple of weeks," he said after clinching a five-stroke victory with a tap-in birdie on Pebble's final hole. "I'm glad that I finally did."
Here's guessing he's probably a bit relieved, too. What makes this week's final result so significant is that now Mickelson can finally bury any lingering effects from last year's Open. Doesn't have to talk about it, doesn't have to think about it, doesn't have to acknowledge it in any way. A defeat like that, in which Lefty sliced his drive off the roof of an adjacent merchandise tent, failed to hit a solid recovery shot and wound up one shot shy of champion Geoff Ogilvy, can fester if not dealt with in prompt fashion.
"I believe I can take what happened at Winged Foot and make it a plus for the rest of my career," Mickelson said. "I think I'm going to be a better driver of the golf ball for the rest of my career. At least, that's the goal."
With no finish better than T-16 in eight starts since that fateful afternoon, Mickelson was in danger of becoming known more for what he hadn't done lately rather than what he had accomplished over the long haul of his 15-year career.
All of that was erased with four magical rounds on the Monterey Peninsula, as Mickelson celebrated the Big Three-Oh -- that's 30 victories -- by making us forget about the one that got away.
After missing the cut at last week's FBR Open, Mickelson dropped out of the top-five on the Official World Golf Ranking (falling to sixth) for the first time since the week of April 25, 2004, just two weeks after clinching his first career major championship at the Masters. (Last Monday, Retief Goosen jumped Mickelson by .06 average ranking points to pass him on the list.) No doubt, though, that Phil will once again jump into his familiar position -- even passing Ernie Els for No. 4 in the world -- following his win at Pebble.
For the second straight year, the AT&T winner was also crowned champion of the Pro-Am portion of the event, too. (Arron Oberholser's team actually shared the honor with that Hunter Mahan in 2006.) Phil Mickelson and Bearing Point CEO Harry You took the title, but it's a daily double that occurs a lot less frequently than you may think. Before last year, only five other winners had earned both titles -- Fuzzy Zoeller (1986), Johnny Miller (1974), Johnny Pott (1968), Art Wall (1959) and Sam Snead (1937).
Mickelson will celebrate his victory by traveling down the Pacific Coast Highway -- OK, maybe over the Pacific Coast Highway -- joining 11 of the world's other top 15 players at the Nissan Open. In a not-so-subtle role reversal between the game's two most recognizable faces, Mickelson will make his first trip to Riviera since 2001, while Tiger Woods will skip the event for the first time since '02. While Woods' inefficiency at the Nissan has been well-chronicled (he's never won in 11 career appearances, his most starts at any event without a victory), Mickelson hasn't fared any better. In eight starts, he's made the cut four times, with no finish better than T-15.
It has come down to this: If you're a PGA Tour tournament director, would you rather have an otherwise average field that included Woods, or a Tiger-less field with most of the world's top players? Such is the conundrum for the Nissan, though certainly not one officials had any say about. In our ESPN.com On The Tee podcast this past week, we debated with SportsCenter's John Anderson about whether a non-Tiger event would garner better ratings than a one-man show in which Woods plays solo on a great course while mic'd up and hitting for the flagsticks. It's a thought that would make golf purists, the Weekly 18 included, shudder with uneasiness, but isn't so far-fetched. After all, this was one of the reasons supplied by Jack Vickers, founder of The International, who was never able to get Woods to partake in his event and wound up being removed from the tour schedule, effective immediately. "We have one outstanding, unbelievable player in the form of Tiger Woods today," Vickers said during a Thursday press conference, "and when he's playing, the ratings are great, and when he isn't playing, the ratings aren't so hot."
It's not a streak that receives too much attention, because he has won a PGA Tour event, but Kevin Sutherland has never won a PGA Tour stroke-play event in 316 career starts. That's because his only career title came at the 2002 Accenture Match Play Championship. Sure, the mark comes with an asterisk, because he has won, but Sutherland remained the tour regular with the most stroke-play starts without a victory on Sunday, finishing in solo second behind Mickelson. On the bright side, of course, his winning percentage in match-play events is 33 percent.
Personally, we've got nothing against John Mallinger. We can't say the same for our spellcheck program, though, which opts instead to refer to him as Maligner (one who attacks the reputation of another by slander or libel) or Malingerer (one who feigns illness in order to shirk duty). Despite being saddled with such labels by our computer, Mallinger looked like a perfectly respectable player this week, enhancing his own reputation and hardly shirking duty in finishing solo third at Pebble Beach. Of course, if you saw this result coming, you're more of a soothsayer than us (or anyone else, for that matter). In the first three starts of his rookie season on the PGA Tour, Mallinger finished MC, MC and T-67, with only two of 10 rounds in the 60s. Mallinger, who earned his way through all three stages of Q School last year, is now more than halfway towards keeping his card for next year. Take that, spellcheck.
Been wondering what pint-sized wunderkind Tadd Fujikawa has been up to since spinning the golf world upside-down with a T-20 finish at the Sony Open last month? Hard as it may be to believe, he's apparently been busy ... getting better. At the prestigious 29th Hawaii Pearl Open, featuring many top pros from Hawaii and Japan, Fujikawa shot 69-68-68 to claim the title by one stroke over Greg Meyer. Let's not think of the 16-year-old as a one-hit wonder or flash in the pan. The kid's got a ton of game and showed it off in earning the biggest victory of his career to date. Here's guessing he'll have much bigger wins in coming years.
News hit the wires this week about Michelle Wie's recent wrist injury, which will keep her from competitive golf for a while. But buried beneath facts on what happened (she fell while running) and how long she'll be sidelined (4-6 weeks) was the information that Wie wasn't planning to play in either of the LPGA's first two regular season events of '07 -- the SBS Open and Fields Open -- anyway, despite both being in her native state of Hawaii. Especially intriguing was that she wouldn't compete in the latter tournament, which is competed on a course she knows very well (Ko Olina Golf Club) and where she finished in third place, just one stroke out of a playoff, a year ago.
Karrie Webb added a Sunday victory at the Australian Ladies Masters to last week's title at the Australian Open, but the Aussie double doesn't necessarily ensure regular-season success on the LPGA. Take, for example, a few of her countrymen. In December of 2004, Peter Lonard won two Australian events and followed with his first career PGA Tour victory (at Harbour Town) and a 34th-place money list finish on the PGA Tour in 2005. In December of '05, Robert Allenby one-upped Lonard, becoming the first player to win the Aussie Triple Crown, but never finished better than fourth on tour the following season, while coming in 56th on the money list.
Jay Haas entered the final round of the Champions Tour's Allianz Championship in a share of first place, but finished solo second, two shots behind winner Mark James. The result inexplicably runs Haas' career record to a combined 0-104 in Florida-based events on both the PGA and Champions tours. But he can take heart in one fact: It's not the losingest one-state record of any of his 50-and-over brethren. That's because Texas native Tom Kite remains winless in the Lone Star State -- 0-105 in his career.
What a difference five years makes. In 2002, two years after falling victim to a Tiger Woods birdie barrage and losing the AT&T in a Monday finish, Matt Gogel returned to the scene of the crime and won his first and only PGA Tour event. This week, the tournament became his last tour event. After finishing 57th on the money list in '02, Gogel dropped to 78th, 98th, 172nd and 214th in each of the next four years, respectively, and announced he would retire from competitive golf following this week's tournament, instead pursuing other interests in and around the game. The 36-year-old concluded his career by shooting 84-77-85 to finish 179th out of 179 players.
Jim Rutledge became a media darling even before he teed it up in his first event of this, his rookie season on the PGA Tour. The 47-year-old Canadian became the second-oldest full-time first-year player (behind only Allen Doyle, who was one month older than Rutledge when he first earned tour status) by finishing 14th on last year's Nationwide Tour money list, but has seen the luster quickly fade away on the West Coast swing. Through five events, he has played a total of 13 rounds, shooting under par only three times and failing to make a cut. The stats are similarly ugly. Entering Pebble, he ranked 120th in driving accuracy, 112th in greens in regulation, 136th in putting average and 158th in overall scoring average.
Former PGA Tour regular Stan Utley hasn't played a double-digit event schedule since 2004, instead serving as a putting instructor to the stars. He's worked with the likes of Jay Haas, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley and Rocco Mediate over the years, each one seeing an improvement in their short game. So, how would Utley fare on the greens in his annual start at Pebble this week? Well, not bad, really. Utley took an average of 29 putts per round (27 at Poppy Hills, 29 at Pebble Beach, 31 at Spyglass) and 1.818 putts per green in regulation. He missed the cut by two strokes and though the tour doesn't keep overall statistical ranks for those who don't reach the final round, he compared somewhat favorably with the leaders entering Sunday. At that point, Mickelson had averaged 28.3 putts and 1.643 per GIR and Sutherland was slightly better at 27 putts and 1.625 per GIR.
Congrats to our pal Chris Berman for his ace during Thursday's opening round. Well, sort of. Playing the par-3 17th hole at Poppy Hills -- "Sloppy Hills," he called it on the phone -- Boomer rolled in a 20-foot putt for birdie-net-eagle, turning a 2 on the hole into a 1 on the scorecard.
With all of the success the University of Florida has seen in the past year -- an NCAA basketball championship, an NCAA football championship, a Dancing with the Stars championship -- we're frankly surprised that Gators Chris DiMarco and Emmitt Smith, paired together at Pebble, didn't pick up another title for the blue and orange. In fact, they weren't even the top twosome in their group, falling to New England Patriots fan Billy Andrade and quarterback Tom Brady. Neither team made the cut to Sunday, but Brady made an 8-foot knee-knocker on the final hole to shoot 79 at Poppy Hills on Friday -- a pretty impressive feat.
We're sure Danny Gans puts on a great show. The guy is, after all, a 10-time winner of Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year. And perhaps we're out of touch with what people find humorous these days. But when Gans, who was paired with Tim Herron this week, impersonated George Burns, Jackie Mason and Bill Cosby within a three-minute span on Friday's telecast, we couldn't help but think of the popular term for these type of celebrity events: Hit and giggle. Politely. (And we didn't even mention the tired impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Kermit the Frog singing a prolonged post-round tune about trying to make the cut. Ugh.) Poor Lumpy.
"This was one of the most emotional weeks I've ever had playing golf, I can tell you that."
-- Eight-time major winner Tom Watson, who along with son Michael finished second in the Pro-Am portion of the AT&T (and 19th overall in the tournament).
Jason Sobel is ESPN.com's golf editor. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn3.com
