Mickelson glad to get back on course

World number two Phil Mickelson is looking forward to playing golf again having endured a worrying time off the course last week when his home was threatened by wild fires in southern California.

The 37-year-old, who is taking part in this week’s Barclays Singapore Open at Sentosa Golf Club, came close to seeing his house in Rancho Santa Fe destroyed by the massive blaze near San Diego last week.

“I had an interesting week in California. We had the wild fires come very close to our home,” said the left-hander.

“In fact, it burned down some of our neighbours’ home. We were fortunate to escape. We spent the earlier part of the week dealing with that, being evacuated and so forth.

“It touched the edges of our lot. There was a street right around our house and eight out of 12 homes were lost.

“It was very close. I feel almost guilty that our home was unscathed but our neighbours lost everything.”

Safe in the knowledge his home had only suffered slight damage from the fires, Mickelson admitted the timing of his trip to Asia to play in the Singapore Open and next week’s HSBC Champions in Shanghai was a "blessing".

“It was just smoke damage and we have people working on it now. It’ll be fine when we get home,” said the three-time major winner.

“This two-week trip is a blessing as I’ve been losing my voice from the ashes in the air and for us to get out of the country and be able to come somewhere else will be good for us.”

Mickelson has never previously visited Singapore and is delighted to finally get the opportunity to play in south east Asia.

“I’ve been looking forward to this trip for some time now,” he said.

“When I was 12, my father came up to play in a world airline tournament here, he was an airline pilot, and they had a big event here in Singapore.

“He brought back a sweater vest that had Singapore Island Country Club and I wore that sweater for years.

“They came back and told us what a great place this was, so I’ve wanted to come here for a long time.”

Mickelson is not renowned for his inclination to travel outside the USA but he stressed he planned to change his itinerary in the future.

“One of the difficulties in the past is that my children had been so young and they’ve not been able to travel around with me,” said the American.

“Now that they are a lot older, I feel like I owe it to them to bring them around the world and to show them the different cultures and different countries.

“This will be an educational two weeks for us and I hope to do more of this in the future to help promote golf on a more international basis but to also educate my children on a more global basis as well.”

With the shortened season in the United States following the introduction of the FedEx Cup this year, Mickelson expects more leading PGA Tour pros to travel to Asia in future.

“I think what we’ll see is a lot more top players play in the international events in the last two or three months because of that (the shorter American season),” he added.

“I think that’s good for the game of golf throughout the international stage.”