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Minutes away from winning his third major championship in a row and 450 yards from being halfway to the Grand Slam, Phil Mickelson had the U.S. Open title within his grasp. Up by a stroke with the 18th hole to play, Mickelson made a double bogey and let it all slip away. He made questionable decisions. He forced shots. He reverted to his pre-major-winning form when he appeared to love taking chances more than hoisting the trophy. “I just can’t believe I did that,” Mickelson said repeatedly to the media after his meltdown. He wasn’t alone. Mickelson blew the 2006 U.S. Open. He knows it. We know it. “I’m such an idiot,” Mickelson said of how he played the final hole. While it’s a harsh self-assessment, there is some truth to his choice of words because the Rancho Santa Fe resident wanted this title so badly. He prepared for Winged Foot by visiting the course numerous times over the past year. He was the overwhelming fan favorite. Tiger Woods didn’t even make the cut. “This one hurts more than any tournament because I had it won,” Mickelson said. “I came out here a week or two ago in the evenings, just spending the evenings on the last four holes thinking that I would just need to make four pars, that there’s a good chance if I can just make four pars on Sunday, I could do it. I made a good par on 15, bogeyed 16 and doubled 18.” Did he lose his mind? Can he recover? PGA Tour colleague and Murrieta resident Tom Pernice, who finished 21st at the U.S. Open, eschews armchair psychoanalysis by saying the course was tough on everybody. Geoff Ogilvy's 285 was the highest winning score in a U.S. Open since Hale Irwin’s 287 at the 1974 event, which was, not surprisingly, also played at Winged Foot. “The set-up was difficult without question, and the toughest part was the greens, which weren’t major-championship caliber,” Per-nice said. “It wasn’t just one person struggling, everybody was. If Ogilvy’s chip doesn’t hit the flag on 17, he could easily have double bogeyed and not even have been a factor.” But even after Ogilvy’s miracle chip at 17, all Mickelson had to do was play the final 450 yards of Winged Foot in a safe manner and his hands would finally be able to grab that elusive trophy. Instead, he chose driver and sliced it way left. Then Mickelson tried cutting it around a tree on his second shot, only to see his ball bounce off a branch and come to rest less than 30 yards away. Those decisions prompted much finger-pointing at Mickelson. But not from Pernice. “Everyone was hitting driver on that hole, Phil just hit a bad shot,” he said. “Knowing how confident Phil is, I’m sure he thought he could hit driver and make par. That’s how he played the entire tournament. It’s how all the long hitters on tour play. Hit driver off the tee and then figure out a way to make par. It’s the reverse of how Nicklaus played when leading.” While Mickelson’s style may have been the same, his execution wasn’t. Mike Voight, a lecturer at USC who runs a sports psychology business in Manhattan Beach, watched the tournament on TV. He saw a golfer who looked apprehensive and didn’t trust the process. “A lot of his mannerisms and nonverbal signals looked negative to me,” Voight said. “Not defeated as much as negative. He looked like he was working against himself, and usually in golf that comes out in shot selection. It looked like he was trying to make up for errant shots and force things.” Being the gallery favorite also may have played a factor, Voight said. “I would love to know if the fans were part of his thinking down the stretch, whether he was thinking too much about letting them down,” he said. “One of the first things he did after the tournament was apologize to the fans, so I think he was definitely feeling the pressure [of their expectations]. He seemed to make rash judgments and went for risky, high failure-rate shots as if he could shoot his way out of it or knew that ‘I’m on my way to blowing this and I’m going to come on strong here and erase all this negative stuff and potential talk of me choking.’ That’s where things begin to unravel.” So what will Phil do next? Will he rebound and continue his march toward winning all four majors? “You know, Phil has a pretty good perspective on what’s important in life,” he said. “Everybody has those thoughts [in defeat]. You get sick to your stomach and it hurts a while. But Phil has a good perspective and knows that he’s put himself in the position to win a few majors in a row and he had a chance with this one. Sure, it’s disappointing, but he’ll be back.” |
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