by Jeff Skinner
Phil Mickelson was at it again today. The five time major champion and favorite of not only the fans but of the media also, was his usual effervescent, wise cracking self in his pre-tournament press conference.
He started with a simple, “This place is awesome.” And went on to say how much he loved the new Pinehurst. “It is just a wonderful site. This is the first — well I really believe that this week is testing a player’s entire game. Because it forces you to make decisions, make good decisions, to choose the right club off the tee, hit solid iron shots into the green, and utilize your short game to save strokes. There’s no luck involved with the hack-it-out rough that sometimes we have around the greens. It’s just a wonderful test that is, I think, the best test I’ve seen to identify the best player.”
This is his 24th U.S. Open and he has great memories of the ’99 Open. “But this place here specifically, obviously I have a lot of very fond emotional memories, from the ’99 experience with Payne Stewart and coming so close and now my daughter who is going to be 15 and we just started teaching her to drive and it’s just amazing how much time has gone by to hear that this is my 24th U.S. Open? I don’t feel that old. I guess I look it, but I don’t feel it. Pinehurst here has so many great memories for me, even though it’s not a place that I have won a national championship, I’m certainly trying to change that this week.”
And yes, that ever adventurous Phil is going to be putting with the claw grip this week. “I’ll go back and forth (between conventional and claw) certainly in my practice rounds, because it creates a kind of a longer more fluid stroke and takes some of the hit out of it. But in windy conditions I like having both hands on, because I want kind of a shorter, more — I don’t want to call it a pop stroke but more of an aggressive stroke. Here I want to have more of a longer, smoother stroke on these greens.”
Phil had his sense of humor today.
On changing things right before a tournament: “I’ve done some crazy stuff, but one of the dumbest things I’ve done which actually never came back to bite me was in the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage, I changed irons after the first round.”
On letting himself think about actually winning here: “I try not to, because I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But it’s only natural that it’s going to. Occasionally I’ll catch myself, but I really try not to, because I really just want to focus on what I need to do to get ready for Thursday. If I can do that, hopefully I’ll give myself a chance on the weekend. But when I jump ahead, that never really works out good, at least in the past, six times.”
On trying to analyze his six second place finishes at the U.S. Open: The one analysis that I’ve made is that of those six top or six second place finishes, five of them it rained. So I’m pulling for rain.”
On sticking to a game plan: “But right now the game plan is X, but it can certainly become Y in a matter of minutes.”
On Johnny Miller saying he has no chance this week if his putting doesn’t improve,” Well, he’s absolutely right, you can’t win any golf tournament putting the way I’ve been putting. I should have won that last week by eight shots if I putted worth — decent.”
Phil was all smiles today and he’ll be the same tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll still have his sense of humor come Sunday evening.
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