Perhaps all Phil Mickelson needed to get really interested was for
Tiger Woods to show up.
Of course, the Masters had something to do with it, too. But
it is interesting to note that Mickelson seemed poised to take the
No. 1 spot in the World Golf Rankings for the first time in his
career with Woods on the sidelines at the start of the last two
seasons and was unable to make his move.
With Woods in exile for nearly five months at the start of
this season after admitting to serial philandering, Lefty had the
same response whenever the media asked him about Tiger. "We need
him out here," Mickelson would say.
But Mickelson, who is in the field along with Woods this week
for the Quail Hollow Championship, might have been thinking all the
while, "I need him out here."
Last season, with Woods still on the shelf following knee
surgery, Mickelson struggled through his first three tournaments
before winning the Northern Trust Open and added the WGC-CA
Championship three weeks later.
By that time Woods was back, and he promptly won the Arnold
Palmer Invitational, the first of his eight victories in 2009.
Mickelson and Woods gave us a Sunday to remember in the 2009
Masters by being paired together ahead of the leaders and charging
side-by-side up the leaderboard before running out of gas in the
final holes.
After tying for second in the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black,
any chance of Mickelson keeping up or making any further inroads
into Woods' margin was sabotaged because he had more important
things on his mind: His wife and mother underwent surgery for
breast cancer.
That virtually wiped out his summer, but he bounced back to
play some of the best golf of his career late in the year, winning
the Tour Championship and the WGC-HSBC Champions Tournament in
addition to helping the United States win the Presidents Cup at
Harding Park.
Those two stroke-play tournament victories came when he
played head-to-head with Woods, whose life was about to implode.
And Phil beat him soundly both times.
People took notice.
"The way Phil Mickelson played at the end of last year, he
played with Tiger in Shanghai, won the tournament there on the
final day," Ernie Els said at the Sony Open in Hawaii in January.
"The Tour Championship, he won coming from behind, you know.
"I mean, the way he is hitting the ball, Phil is hitting it
as long, or longer, than anybody out there. He has really been
working hard. Now his putting is coming around.
"I think Phil is probably the man to beat now."
Said Mickelson: "I'm playing the best golf of my career."
That was even before Woods became tabloid fodder. The
speculation at the time was that this season Lefty might finally be
able to put up a sustained challenge for the No. 1 ranking.
We have heard that kind of talk from Mickelson before, but
Phil the Thrill has run hot-and-cold throughout his career.
The best example of that came when he was on the verge of
winning three consecutive major titles as he stepped to the 18th
tee at Winged Foot in the 2006 U.S. Open.
Even though he would not have overtaken Woods in the
rankings, golf pundits were saying that with a victory Lefty would
be considered the best player in the world by acclimation.
Without a 3-wood in his bag, Mickelson was forced to go with
driver and sliced his tee shot off a hospitality tent en route to a
double bogey that opened the door for Geoff Ogilvy to win the
title.
And so it was again this year, when Mickelson had a seemingly
unobstructed path to the top of the world but virtually sleepwalked
through his first seven tournaments. A tie for eighth at Pebble
Beach was his best finish.
Then Woods returned, almost looking as if he never left as he
tied for fourth in the Masters. But, seemingly out of nowhere,
Mickelson put on a virtuoso performance to claim the first major of
the year.
There are those who are saying that Lefty now has his rival's
number, having won the last three tournaments with both not only in
the field but in the hunt on Sunday.
Mickelson has posted the lower score five of the last seven
times the two have been paired in a PGA Tour event, and they
finished even once. He also has finished higher than Woods in three
of the last four majors with both in the field.
Woods holds an 11-10-4 edge in head-to-head pairings over the
course of their careers, but the only numbers that really count are
on their major championship scorecards.
Than one reads: Woods 14, Mickelson 4.
Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major titles has long been
Tiger's target, and the Golden Bear had challenges from the likes
of Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson to help push him to
that figure.
Woods has had singular battles with the likes of Sergio
Garcia, Bob May, Rocco Mediate and Chris DiMarco, but no one other
than Mickelson and perhaps Vijay Singh has pushed him on a regular
basis.
By earning his third Green Jacket, Mickelson nosed past Els,
Singh and Padraig Harrington with four major titles to his name.
Even so, he has long been considered the second-best golfer
of this generation and will be linked with Woods forever, exactly
the way we consider Nicklaus and Palmer joined for eternity.
It's like an ongoing reality show. Stay tuned for the next
episode of Tiger vs. Phil, on display this weekend.
