ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- He looked like Phil Mickelson with that loping stride and that clear-eyed grin. He had all the right logos in the right places.

	The Phil Mickelson who showed up Thursday wasn't the Lefty of 2003.

But this guy looked nothing like the Phil Mickelson of 2003. This guy hit his drives in the fairways. He hit his greens in regulation. There's one more thing different about this PM -- he is in first place.

With a 4-under 66 on Thursday, Mickelson shares the first-round lead at the 85th PGA Championship with Rod Pampling, an Australian turned Texan. Although Mickelson has won 21 times on the PGA Tour, the Phil Mickelson of 2003 has been in first place about as often as the New York Mets. He hasn't contended since The Masters, where he finished a distant third to Mike Weir and Len Mattiace. Mickelson has been so off-key that no one bothered to mention heading into the PGA that he hasn't won a tournament this year, much less bring up the size 45 collar he's wearing in major championships.

Let me translate -- that means no one thought the Phil Mickelson of 2003 would win the PGA Championship.

A combination of his wildness and the vindictiveness of the East Course at Oak Hill Country Club, which treats mistakes as harshly as do the nuns in "The Magdalene Sisters," made Mickelson seem like a long shot. And he pointed out Thursday that he hasn't won anything yet here.

"It was one good day," he said. "It was a nice start, but it is nothing more than that."

Still, Mickelson's round was refreshing, if only because it looked like anything but his play this year. He kept his tee shots in play, even when he pulled his driver. At the 570-yard fourth hole, Mickelson hit driver, 4-wood to the apron of the green and easily got up and down for birdie.

That might sound routine for Mickelson, but not this year. Mickelson went to a different driver at the beginning of the year in a search for more distance. He got it -- he's averaging 304 yards a drive -- but the added distance subtracted from his accuracy. No one ever confused Mickelson with Jim Furyk, who is on more fairways than the mowers. But Mickelson arrived at Oak Hill hitting barely half of his fairways. He ranks 192nd in driving accuracy. That's out of 195 golfers, which means that Mickelson is ahead of David Duval, mired in the worst slump in the sport, and two guys on loan from the Blind Golfers of America.

	Mickelson shot a 66, which was one shot better then the best score of the "super group" on each hole.

On Thursday, Mickelson hit nine of 14 fairways. He also hit 14 of his first 16 greens, a number he has rarely approached this year. He missed the last two fairways, but made a "Watson par" at the 17th and almost repeated it at the 18th. Watson pars, the kind that Tom Watson used to regularly conjure out of apparent double-bogeys, have been a staple of Mickelson's career.

It might be only one round, but Mickelson played well in what has been an uncharacteristically average year. The money list shows that Mickelson is 26th, with more than $1.3 million. However, he placed in the top 10 in four of his first five starts. He missed the better part of two months because of the birth of his first son in March. For only the second time in his professional career, Mickelson went into The Masters without a victory. After his third-place finish at Augusta, Mickelson didn't post another top-10 until last week, at the International, where he finished tied for sixth.

"I knew I was playing better than I had all year because of my performance last week," Mickelson said.

He has been working on the length of his swing instead of the length of his drives. That is the Phil Mickelson of old, not the Phil Mickelson of 2003.

"All the trouble on this course is (to the) right off the tee," Mickelson said. "I thought I did a pretty good job of that. All my misses for the most part were to the left of the fairway, which is a good thing here. I was able to make some pars on the holes that I missed fairways."

It has been the kind of year when the most news Mickelson had made has been off the course, what with his flippant remark that Tiger Woods wins despite his "inferior equipment," a shot at Nike, not Woods. (Let the record show that Mickelson was right. Woods ditched his Nike driver last month for his old, reliable Titleist.)

The ensuing tempest embittered Mickelson, who has always prided himself on accommodating the media. He has made himself noticeably scarce this year, and his play has helped that mission. For the first time in anyone's memory, Mickelson didn't complete a pre-major interview. He has begun spending Wednesdays away from the course. Here, he played Country Club of Rochester (like Oak Hill East and West, a Donald Ross course), then attended a Buffalo Bills training camp, which is down the street.

If he opened his USA Today on Thursday morning, Mickelson would discover that he didn't make the list of 10 PGA contenders. (To add insult to injury, he was omitted from the newspaper's chart listing the five-best 72-hole scores in PGA Championship history. Mickelson's 266 in 2001 is second on the all-time list. David Toms, who beat him by one stroke that year, is first.)

Mickelson is three long rounds from winning, but as he pointed out, major championship venues usually get more difficult as the week progresses. With more hot weather predicted, Oak Hill should only get harder and faster. If he can keep his ball in the short grass, there will be a new Phil Mickelson in 2003, maybe even one who has won a major.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.