Mickelson tries to shake off second again

Phil Mickelson , with a copy of Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell in his luggage and a record second only to Tiger Woods’s in recent major championships on his curriculum vitae, arrived at Muirfield on Saturday morning, anxious to have his first look at what he had heard was the most straightforward of all Open Championship courses.

“Isn’t the outward nine a horseshoe around the exterior of the course and the inward nine a horseshoe inside the outward nine?” Mickelson had asked on Friday, moments before he drove to San Diego airport for his flight. “And there aren’t many trees, are there? No? Good. They are one obstacle that makes it tough to decide how the wind is blowing, because the wind swirls around them. It’s always been pretty easy to identify which way the wind is blowing, but it’s always tough to judge it because it is so strong and the air is so thick.”

That sentence gave a glimpse of what makes Mickelson, 32, one of the most interesting of modern golfers. Discussions of air thickness are not what you normally hear in the locker-rooms of the professional tour and it was a reminder that Mickelson has a pilot’s licence to fly jets (he once landed a Cessna twin-engine plane when the instruments had broken). His interest in the wind demonstrated how that particular element has affected his game more than most.

Mickelson was born in San Diego and grew up playing golf with a long swing that sent the ball high and gave it great spin. Hitting it so high has meant that he has struggled in the wind. This might explain why in nine appearances at the Open his best finish is eleventh, in 2000 at St Andrews, where there was little or no wind, and why his worst round, an 85, came in the blustery third round of the 1998 Open at Royal Birkdale.

Mickelson has been working to lower the trajectory of his shots, reduce the spin and has begun to change his game dramatically. This could be the reason why, despite 16 top-ten finishes in 36 major championships, he has been far more successful recently, finishing second, third and second in the past three majors. He does not think these results are as good as they should be. Nor do his critics, who accuse him of wilting in the heat of battle and cite the fact that, although he has twice led major championships after the first round and twice after the second, he has never led after 54 holes. They point to his second places, to his not winning a major, to his not challenging Woods.

This might be a worthwhile argument except for the following: who stopped Woods’s streak of six successive tournament victories in 2000? Mickelson. How many players have overtaken Woods in the last round of an event that he was leading? Four — Lee Westwood, Thomas Björn, Ed Fiori and Mickelson. Who has won the most tournaments when Woods has been in the field? David Duval and Mickelson, with six.

Mickelson will always go for the shot that might give him victory rather than the one that will certainly bring him second place. “It does not matter to me finishing second as opposed to third,” he said. “I love to compete for championships whether I win them or not. It’s my favourite thing. It doesn’t bother me, winning or losing. What I enjoy is the challenge.”

But surely the greatest challenge is to win tournaments? “Certainly. But that is a result. You cannot control the result. I cannot control how well others play. I can only control how I play and I enjoy trying to bring out my best golf and shoot the lowest score I can. Unfortunately for me, it hasn’t been the lowest score in the field.”

Which brings us to Woods and his dominance. Does Mickelson think that he has closed on the world No 1, who has won seven of the past 11 majors? “I don’t like to compare my game to other players, but I have noticed that, instead of winning by eight and twelve, he is only winning by two or three,” Mickelson said.

“Over the weekend of the US Open, I was able to make up five shots on him. Unfortunately, I was eight shots behind. At the PGA he wasn’t a factor. It was David Toms’s tournament. And at the Masters I was trying to overcome four shots heading into the last day and I think I shot the lowest score in the field — unfortunately, so did he. So I don’t feel like it’s an unobtainable obstacle to overcome, but it certainly is very difficult.”

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