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By John Maginnes
PGATOUR.com Contributor

When I drive, I like to listen to books on CD. It is a pleasure that comes with the graying sideburns and the general responsibilities that we all bear. When I read, I prefer mindless fiction and escapism. For me non-fiction, spoken and heard, brings life and meaning to subjects that may otherwise elude me.

Phil Mickelson's exhaustive pre-tournament preparation has led to improved results. (WireImage)

On a recent trip, I listened to Buzz Bissinger's "Three Nights in August." It is a baseball book done in collaboration with Tony La Russa, the winningest baseball manager active today. As I listened to the wonderfully worded prose, I was struck by the commonality between the managerial approach to the baseball series and a professional golfers approach to a tournament.

Obviously, the gulf that divides the two sports is far too vast for any logical comparison on any fundamental level. But the mental approach of Tony La Russa, the personal sacrifice and the meticulous preparation are common to all sports. And there is a particular closeness between what occurs during a baseball season and what happens every week from January to November in golf.

The baseball season is broken up into series where teams play a particular opponent for three or four games on consecutive days. The general focus of the book is about the preparation and execution of a series between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals in the summer of 2003. Only a true baseball fan would appreciate the dogged detail that the author goes into when describing the conception and execution of the strategy La Russa developed.

As a player who used many of the same analytical process of logic to prepare, though, I was drawn deeper into the story. The nuance and complexity of Tony's anxiety over every detail struck a cord.

When you see a baseball game or watch a golf tournament, what you are seeing is the end result of infinite worrying and tinkering. Baseball teams battle each other while golfers battle the course. Each week brings a new and unique set of familiar and unfamiliar challenges. PGA TOUR players battle different courses each week, with the same set of tools but an ever-altering game plan.

Yet, to my knowledge, the processes of preparation and planning that a TOUR player goes through each week have never been properly independently chronicled. First-hand accounts by players tend to have a blind spot or two. They also tend to be written after the fact by guys like me who have stepped away from the grind. And total access for independent members of the media is rarely if ever given. Aside from not wanting to give away their secrets, TOUR players, like all athletes, hate to admit their vulnerabilities.

One of the reasons we love golf is that a player is not limited to or buoyed solely by his physical ability. In most other sports, physical prowess can carry even the least introspective players a long way. That is completely untrue in golf. It is generally assumed that Tiger Woods is the most physically gifted player, perhaps, of all time. But each year rarely does he lead the TOUR in any daily statistical category other than stroke average.

Tiger is the current standard by which the top players measure themselves, though. If the gap is narrowing, one of the ways is in a player's approach to his own game. Phil Mickelson is an obvious student of the game. Like Tiger, he gives us only glimpses into his preparation but the results tell an interesting tale. Although Phil still has a swashbuckler's flair for the dramatic he has tempered his approach in recent years. His pre-tournament course preparation is exhaustive. His game plan is set long before the call to the first tee. The proof is in the results of the last several years for Phil.

Ironically, it is the PGA TOUR players of lesser fame who may actually be the most meticulous. These players maintain careers and earn occasional victories where others with similar physical skill fold sweaters and teach old ladies how to break 100. Conversely, there are many players who never fully reach their potential for a variety of reasons that all point toward preparation. Each successful player has struck a delicate balance of sacrifice, dedication and regret that allows them to achieve.

While the comparison between a TOUR player and a successful major league manager ends quickly when you compare tasks, it is alive when discussing preparation. It lives in the never fully fed competitive spirit that drives all great athletic minds.