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 Phil Mickelson, shown at this year's Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, continued to rely on his stellar short game to win the WGC-HSBC Champions in China (PHOTO: Eddie Meeks). Sunday’s final round featured an uncharacteristic ending for the normally tenacious Woods, who dropped three shots early and couldn’t recover, and a familiar finish for Mickelson, who rode a rollercoaster down the stretch that included a flubbed chip, a miraculous par save, a short birdie and a gutsy par on the par-5 18th, where he never hit from the fairway. It was typical Lefty. The San Diegan found a way to put the outcome in doubt while still proving to be the best player in the field for 72 holes. He’s been a professional for 18 years and he’ll be 40 years old next year, but he is still that good. Golf fans likely won’t see Mickelson in action again until the end of January at Torrey Pines, as he will spend approximately the next three months with his family. His wife, Amy, and mother, Mary, are both recovering from breast cancer, and the next stretch of time will mark the longest break for Phil since the pair of diagnoses earlier this year. Despite Mickelson's pending absence from the limelight, the tone he set with a pair of late-season wins in ’09 should still ring clearly when he tees off next year in Southern California. In 2010, Mickelson seems poised to challenge Woods as the No. 1 golfer in the world. For anyone besides Woods to lay claim to that title is usually a foolish thought, and the numbers still support that sentiment. Even though Mickelson gained ranking points by winning the HSBC and September’s Tour Championship, Woods finished tied for sixth and second in those events, respectively. Thus, Mickelson has drawn blood on the world’s upper echelon of golfers not named Woods and firmly solidified the No. 2 world ranking, but Woods isn’t wounded. Actually, he’s still miles ahead of his Southern California counterpart and everyone else. But for the first time in a while — even more so than last year, when Woods wasn’t even playing while rehabilitating from knee surgery — there is serious justification that Mickelson is ready to go mano a mano with Woods. Not just in majors and not just on the West Coast Swing, but over the course of a whole year. "I'm excited about 2010 because I'm starting to play the best golf of my career," Mickelson said. "Everything is starting to kind of come together." Obviously, so much of Woods’s dominance can be attributed to the tournaments he wins, although the tournaments he doesn’t win set him so far apart. Aside from his missed cut at the British Open, the Cypress native only finished outside the top 10 in one stroke-play event in 2009 — and that was a tie for 11th at the Deutsche Bank Championship. That ridiculous consistency is almost as much of a reason why he has such a stranglehold on the No. 1 ranking as the sheer number of tournaments he wins (six in 2009, to be exact). The sample size for Mickelson’s recent dominance is small, but the short-game mastery he’s demonstrated within that time — aided by Redlands resident and two-time PGA Championship winner Dave Stockton — suggests he could be poised to achieve a similar level of consistency. In his two wins, he recorded less than 30 putts in seven of his eight rounds, ranking first in greens in regulation at the Tour Championship and sixth in total putts at the HSBC Champions — what’s more, Mickelson got up and down 18 out of 21 times in China. That’s really, really good. "My short game is better than it's ever been," said Mickelson. Even when he was out of contention at the Barclays Singapore Open the week before the HSBC, he wasn’t completely off the map — like he was in the first three events of 2009, when he missed a cut and finished no better than tied for 42nd at three venues where he's won multiple times. Like the rest of the field in Singapore, Mickelson struggled to make putts (only four players in the field averaged less than 30 putts per round, and Mickelson averaged 31), but he did enough to finish tied for 14th, six shots behind winner Ian Poulter. Stockton, who has an official working relationship with Mickelson, has seemed to instruct his pupil to take a slightly wider putting stance. Whatever else Stockton has imparted seems to be working, and as long as Mickelson stays fresh on the greens in the offseason it’s not difficult to imagine him enjoying similar success in 2010. Mickelson is still one of the game’s longest hitters and is more than capable of overpowering difficult layouts, but even with supreme confidence in his swing he isn’t about to vault into the Tour’s leaders in driving accuracy. Like Woods, scrambling needs to be a strength for him to prosper. Lately, it has been, and look what's happened. For Mickelson, stellar chipping and putting could mean a lot more than a firm place as the world’s no. 2. It might give him enough ammunition to do one of the few things he’s yet to accomplish in his illustrious career — overtake Woods as the best golfer in the world. "Going into 2010, not only am I excited about it, but I have very high expectations," Mickelson said. |
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