Mickelson’s mountain to climb at the Hills

PHYSICALLY a little out of shape, beaten up mentally after throwing away a winning position in the Scottish Open, missing the cut in the British Open Championship and finishing way down the field in last week’s Bridgestone WGC at Akron, not many would be prepared to wager the mortgage on Phil Mickelson for a second US PGA victory here this week.

Few are as gifted in every facet of the game than Mickelson. Equally, it is fair to say that most would have made more use of his God-given talent.

Two Masters green jackets and one PGA just doesn’t seem enough and while he is still no more than 37 years of age, “Lefty” has looked so dishevelled on the golf course of late that you begin to strongly doubt whether he can improve on this record before it’s too late.

Nor does it help his supporters when he continues to blame a hand or wrist injury for most of his troubles.

“Last week was the first time I didn’t have to numb up the back of my hand to be able to hit balls,” he claimed. “I was able to actually practice for a few days and work on my game. Now, I haven’t played well in the last couple of months but also I haven’t been able to practice. So I’m hoping that a different practice regime will make for a much better performance.”

To be fair to Mickelson, he demonstrated remarkable patience in waiting 12 long years for that 2004 green jacket at Augusta. And that’s probably why at this moment in time he is feeling a little sorry for Sergio Garcia, who has inherited his title as the best player in the world never to win a major.

“I believed it was just a matter of time just as Sergio believes that now,” he reasoned. “He’s just too good a player for it not to happen. The hardest thing about it was coming in here. I never believed that I would never win one. I think he feels the same but answering questions about it can be difficult. No matter how well thought out or nice the questions were, there was no good answer. It was always going to come back to bite you. The toughest part was trying to answer honestly and I always felt the questions were kind of loaded even though they were not meant to be.”

Mickelson’s interviewees yesterday too polite or maybe just plain afraid to discuss the great left hander’s apparent weight increase, although if there was the kind of loaded question to which he had earlier referred, it was how he would deal with the 100F temperatures predicted for the four days of the tournament.

“Probably no different than anybody else,” he insisted. “Just drink a lot of water, try to stay in the shade and pace myself. There’s no sense in walking fast. What’s interesting is that I love playing in the heat. It loosens your swing and the ball flies a lot straighter because you don’t have the resistance.”