Simon Lewis, Hazletine

You can understand why Phil Mickelson would rather be watching American football instead of golf right now.

Having taken six weeks off after the US Open to be with wife Amy as she began treatment for breast cancer, Mickelson returned to competitive action last week at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

In his seven rounds since, at Firestone Country Club in Ohio and here in Minnesota at Hazeltine National for this week's US PGA Championship, the world number two has broken 70 just once, a 69 during his second round back in Akron.

The worst yet came at Hazeltine on Saturday as Lefty shot a third-round 76 plagued with problems off the tee and with the putter.

“It's frustrating for me to not be in contention on the weekends of a major,” Mickelson said. “That's the toughest thing.”

And when he was asked whether he would be going home to watch the golfing drama unfold at the business end of the tournament Mickelson admitted he may turn to his televisual version of comfort food, pre-season NFL games, rather than cheer on old foe Tiger Woods from his La-Z-Boy recliner.

“That or preseason football. My (San Diego) Chargers play tonight,” he said before remembering his traditional public relations duty as cheerleader for the local team.

“The Vikings looked good last night, too,” he added, referring to Minnesota's favourite NFL outfit. “They're going to have a good year.”

Mickelson may have an ally in the gridiron versus golf debate in veteran sports writer Dan Jenkins, who is this week at Hazeltine celebrating covering his 201st major championship.

The doyen of golf writing, the highly entertaining 79-year-old is this week restricting his thoughts to 140 characters or less on Twitter.com but he was dragged away from his laptop to reminisce a while with his peers as the PGA of America baked him a cake to mark the occasion.

“My two passions in sports were golf and college football,” Jenkins said. “And they still are.

“And like I told somebody last night after I had a couple of drinks I said, 'Hey, golf is fun. It's beautiful. It's elite. It's gorgeous and all those things.

“'But college football is important'.”