I'd never lost sleep over a golf match--not my own, not anyone else's--but the though of Phil Mickelson's complete and utter meltdown at Sunday's Open was too much to bear. Woke up every half-hour all night, thinking I'd dreamt the whole thing.
No such luck.
Monday morning, eight am. Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my hair. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup. Looking up, I noticed I was late.
Then checked the weather on TV, saw that eleven inches of rain had closed down the city . . . and crawled back into bed.
In ESPN.com, Skip Bayless believes Phil had no choice. Skip:
This wasn't a mental blunder. This was purely physical. Needing par to win, he should have hit driver on 18, and he did. He just shouldn't have bounced it off the hospitality tent.
So don't buy Mickelson's excuse.
"I am such an idiot," he said, playing the sympathy card much better than he played No. 18 on Sunday.
No, this had nothing to do with Jean Van de Velde's situation at the 1999 British Open. Van de Velde needed to make only a double bogey to win and wound up making a triple.
Again, Mickelson needed par.
Remember, he had birdied Nos. 11 and 15 out of the rough to take a two-shot lead. On the par-4 17th, he hit another banana-slice, this one landing in a trash bag beyond the trees and gaining him a lucky drop on the trampled-down spectator path. And he hit another thing of beauty, a smoked fade that curved around the trees and chased up into the middle of the green. What a par that was.
So now Mickelson needed to make one more 4 on the par-4 18th. Sure, he could have played for a bogey and an 18-hole Monday playoff. But come on. This was Phil Mickelson, winner of two straight majors. This, as any fan at Winged Foot would have told you, was Phil "Freakin'" Mickelson, the toast of New York, the equivalent of Derek Jeter playing at Yankee Stadium. No. 18 isn't a 3-wood or 3-iron hole. It's a driver hole. Besides, Mickelson was carrying only a 4-wood. And as wildly as he was driving the ball, why should he risk missing the fairway with a 4-wood and leaving himself 250 yards from the flag?
No, he should have hit his driver and hoped for the best. After all, the odds were with him. He hadn't hit a fairway on the back nine.
Bayless has built a career out of his counterintuitive summaries of the day's sports scene: first scouting the conventional wisdom, then intuitively staking out its opposite. It's a nice strategy, not least of which effort was his break-out bestseller, God's Coach, in which Bayless ran straight at the popular myths surrounding the pre-Jerry Jones Dallas Cowboys. In his book, Bayless set out to destroy popular myths. That Tom Landry, supposedly God's Own Head Coach with an IBM mainframe for a skull, was actually a pious phoney, a fog-brained blunderer who lucked into two Super Bowl championships thanks to the efforts of a quarterback (Roger Staubach) smart enough to convert Landry's play calls into English. That Gil Brandt, the original Superscout, was actually a soulless dullard with a good ear but no instinct for talent (and what better proof, Bayless asked, that no NFL team would hire Brandt after Jones let him go?). That Tex Schramm, Mr. Corporate NFL, was actually the beneficiary of lecherous owner Clint Murchison's largesse, and handed interim owner Bum Bright a franchise that was bleeding money and bereft of talent.
That the Eagle Scout Cowboys, after Lance Rentzel, Hollywood Henderson, Too-Tall Jones . . . okay, you get the picture.
I've read God's Coach through twice, and while I think Bayless goes a little hard on Landry's piety (perhaps a little sympathy might be in order for a man tortured by the thought of saying "Get another career" to 22 year-olds), and almost certainly under-estimates Landry's coaching talent (I mean, someone got all those wins), I must admit, Bayless makes a compelling case.
But back to Mickelson. This time I'm not buying. Consider:
Remember, he had birdied Nos. 11 and 15 out of the rough to take a two-shot lead. On the par-4 17th, he hit another banana-slice, this one landing in a trash bag beyond the trees and gaining him a lucky drop on the trampled-down spectator path. And he hit another thing of beauty, a smoked fade that curved around the trees and chased up into the middle of the green. What a par that was.
Yes, and does anyone notice a pattern here? Crappy driver shot, gorgeous iron. The first rule of golf is: if your driver isn't working, keep it in your bag. Phil's irons worked for him all day, until he tried to go Tin Cup on 18. Two irons would have sufficed to get on the green: long, then short. And, as Bayless states, Phil didn't pack a three-wood? On Sunday? In the US Open? Sheesh. That's a whole other conversation.
So now Mickelson needed to make one more 4 on the par-4 18th. Sure, he could have played for a bogey and an 18-hole Monday playoff. But come on. This was Phil Mickelson, winner of two straight majors. This, as any fan at Winged Foot would have told you, was Phil "Freakin'" Mickelson, the toast of New York, the equivalent of Derek Jeter playing at Yankee Stadium.
Which is, Skip Bayless, the whole freakin' point. Mickelson couldn't, or wouldn't, pull himself out of the moment and simply concentrate on the best shot. Derek Jeter has hit quite a few memorable home runs. But he's going to the Hall of Fame on the strength of the singles he's dumped into right.
No. 18 isn't a 3-wood or 3-iron hole. It's a driver hole.
If your driver is working, yeah.
Besides, Mickelson was carrying only a 4-wood. And as wildly as he was driving the ball, why should he risk missing the fairway with a 4-wood and leaving himself 250 yards from the flag?
First, as I've already stated, on the hardest day in the golf calendar--Sunday at the US Open, when the fairways are as narrow as hallways--what was Mickelson doing without his 3-wood?
Leaving that aside, Mickelson had been gorgeous with his irons. Would a 2- or 3-iron have killed him?
No, he should have hit his driver and hoped for the best. After all, the odds were with him. He hadn't hit a fairway on the back nine.
The odds were with him? Okay, now Bayless is succumbing to one of his terminal bouts of the cutes, a prime signal that his rhetoric has abandoned him.
No, again: two-iron, seven-iron, putt, putt. From here to eternity.
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