PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Eager to see how his game would fare under the gun once again, Phil Mickelson, like his PGA Tour brethren, found that PGA National’s Champion course was a true bear on Thursday.
Steady 20-plus-mph winds turned Round 1 into a full-blown battle for survival, and Mickelson enjoyed the exam that the water-laden course presented him. He hit eight fairways and 10 greens, twice found water and had to do some considerable scrambling just to get to the clubhouse in 1-over 71.
“I enjoyed the challenge of the wind,” said Mickelson, who is pressing to see better results after an offseason in which he dedicated himself in the gym. “I enjoy having to hit shots to work the ball back into the wind or let it fall with the wind to get the balls in the fairway, to get them to the green, and get them close to the hole. It's fun. You're not able to hit just the same shots over and over, and some I pulled off and some I didn't, and I enjoyed the challenge of the round.
“I think this is going to be really a good tournament, a good test.”
In three starts on the West Coast, Mickelson counted a tie for 24th (Humana) as his best result, and he arrived at Honda having missed the cut at Phoenix and Torrey Pines. Things have been slow, to say the least.
On Thursday, Mickelson seemed to be on the verge of losing control of his round on his final nine, the front, but managed to hold things together. He blocked a 3-wood left into a hazard on the par-4 second, yet got up and down from a bunker for bogey; he managed a bogey at the par-3 fifth after his tee shot with a 6-iron bounded into a hazard left of the green; and he somehow avoided a huge number on the par-4 sixth, where a blocked drive left his ball on the edge of yet another hazard. He splashed a second shot only 20 yards or so up that stayed in the rough, knocked his third just over the green and used a deft pitch from 80 feet to save yet another bogey. On this day, with the wind up, bogeys were not only acceptable, but sometimes welcomed.
It was a day to put the head down and just keep grinding.
“Yeah, if I had come from Ireland, I probably would be thinking it was a nice day,” said Padraig Harrington, who played alongside Mickelson and shot 3-under 67. “But having played the last four weeks over here (in the U.S.), even I was struggling and questioning and doubting myself out there. I found it very difficult.”
Mickelson said despite the mistakes he made coming in, he did see some positive signs. For all the bad shots, there were some good ones – a 345-yard bomb off the tee at the par-5 18th to set up an easy birdie wasn’t bad – and he liked the way the ball was rolling off the putter.
Ah, the putter. A good deal of focus on his lackluster play has been placed on his work on the greens, but Mickelson said he doesn’t believe that his shortstick is his biggest issue. He made a few nice saves Thursday but missed an 8-footer for birdie at the par-4 ninth that would have given him a level-par finish. He had 27 putts in all, and didn’t make a putt longer than 10 feet.
“I made a couple of good 4‑footers for par and birdie early on, and it was fine from there,” he said. “I hit every putt on line. It felt good. Putting is not really the issue I'm worried about, even though it was the weakness earlier in the year. I thought it was fine today, and I don't expect it to be an issue. But we'll see.”
