'New Phil' overpowers with driver-wedge combo
By Melanie Hauser, PGATOUR.COM Correspondent
FORT WORTH, Texas -- He's hit miraculous shots-- backwards.
He's pulled off jaw-droppers by skipping the ball across the water.
He's parted branches on trees. Thick, old, can't-see-through-them-trees.
He can make a ball dance. Pirouette, mind you, and stop on a blade of grass. Or his instructor's hand.
And he can take down just about any course with his wedge. Well, one of the five.
Yes, Phil Mickelson has hit some incredible shots in his career and his wife Amy has seen almost every one of them. So when she saw him in the trees at No. 18 -- well, almost the 10th fairway -- the first thing she did was ask where the playoff holes were.
And when she saw him pull out his gap wedge and go for it? Under one branch of a tree, over another and drop it in there 9 feet from the pin?
"I like that old Phil is on reserve when he needs it,'' she smiled.
OldPhil/New Phil, the one with five wedges in his bag , the one who had us all thinking Winged Foot when he went left -- and way off the map -- on his tee shot at the 72nd hole, pulled this one off with another one of his what-will-Phil-do-next moments.
He capped a day of long putts that came up short and a day of drives in the rough with a 140-yard miracle and his fourth birdie of the week at the 18th hole to win the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial -- and his second red-plaid jacket, we might add. He beat Tim Clark and Rod Pampling -- both of whom were thinking playoff -- by a shot.
We might also add that, with Tiger Woods sidelined, he's got his eyes set on next week's Memorial Tournament and, two weeks down the road, the U.S. Open in his what amounts to his own backyard -- Torrey Pines.
"I felt like before I came here that this tournament needed to be the start to my run to the U.S. Open,'' he said.
Before heading to Colonial, he tweaked his putting stroke at the Callaway Center. Here, at a staid old course where players are known for working the ball around the narrow doglegs, Mickelson put a new theory into practice -- five wedges, one driver. Slam it down there, let one of those wedges or his 9-iron do the rest.
"I think we all need to find out what works best for us,'' Mickelson said. "And what works best for me is not necessarily going to work best for other players. Everybody has to find their own way to prepare for tournaments, their own club set, and make up. . . Different things work better for them.
"I play better in a major when I play the week before. A lot of guys need to take the week off. Just little things like that. I found that attacking this golf course is a better way for me to play it.''
So did he show the field a new way to think about playing here?
"What, '' he laughed. "From the trees?''
Old Phil would have totally bombed and gouged, but new Phil was more patient, more under control. He knew when to go for it, when to calculate -- something he didn't do when he let the U.S. Open slip away on the 72nd hole with a wild drive and second shot -- the percentages.
"I like to play aggressively,'' he said. "I do try to think my way through it a little bit.
New Phil hung in there when he bogeyed the fifth hole, then fell into a tie when Rod Pampling birdied the sixth. Two Pampling birdies later, Mickelson was down by two to his playing partner.
"It was tough to get a lot of the shots close to the pins today because the pins were more tucked than they had been the previous days,'' said Mickelson, who also won at Colonial in 2000. "And my iron shots, I hit a lot of them solid. But I missed them on the proper side. But I gave myself 30, 40 footers all the time. I didn't knock down the pin and give myself tap ins.
"To me I needed to make some of those putts, and they weren't going in. I knew if I could stay patient, that nobody was going to really run away. It was tough to make birdies there. And I didn't feel as though anybody was going to make a birdie run and take off. I just needed to be patient and get a couple of my own. But it wasn't easy.''
Mickelson found one at No. 13 -- a chip to 5 feet -- to cut Pampling's lead to one. Then kept working for pars until Clark birdied the 16th and 17th to get to 13-under and Pampling bogeyed No. 17 -- his drive found the ditch -- to have a three-way tie as Mickelson and Pampling headed down the 72nd hole.
A driver, wedge and 8 feet for birdie, he laughed afterward. But when he walked up to his tee shot? He saw the gap.
"Obviously, I'm thinking if I could somehow make a par, and get in a playoff, that would be a victory,'' he said. "And I got up there and I didn't have, really a chance to go low. There were trees everywhere. But I did have an opportunity to go underneath the first tree and over the second tree.
"And with the wind pushing the ball from right to left it was going to help it get to the pin. And I thought I could hit a wedge through that gap on the green, and I was hoping for a 25-30 foot putt.''
Instead, his ball hit the edge of the green and cozied up just 9 feet from the pin. A Mickel-moment.
"It just came off perfectly,'' he said of the shot. "I never saw it. Once it took off, I never saw the flight of the ball because it was hidden from the trees, the overhanging trees in front of me. But I kind of ran out to the fairway and saw it end up 8 feet.
"That was a pretty cool feeling.''
Another one? When he looks at the stat sheet he'll see that on his way his winning 14-under-par 266, he made 65 of 73 putts inside 10 feet. None more crucial than the last. All boding well heading into the next two events.
His last trip to Memorial was his best -- he tied for fourth in 2006. Prior to that, he's had a tie for ninth (2002) and a tie for 11th (1999). It's not that he hasn't wanted to play there, it just hasn't fit his schedule. Now, well, he's got to be one of the favorites heading into the week.
Caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay was on top of the tricks winds all day -- "a real challenge here,'' Mickelson said -- and they'll likely be at Memorial, too. And, he read every putt except the last one.
Why? "I had a good look at it, and I didn't want to over-think it,'' Mickelson said.
Same goes for the Old Phil wedge that will live in infamy, history and on every highlight reel for a long while. Mickelson put it in his top five, but declined to list the others.
"It's one of my more memorable ones because it turned out the way I was hoping it would,'' he said. "There's been a few times where it hasn't.''
He paused.
"I feel in this day and age, it's so hard to win tournaments with so many great players, and if you have any opportunities at all, you really need to capitalize on it,'' he said.
"You have to take some risks to win. I try to do that.''
Sunday, Old/New Phil did just that.
So there's just one question left.
What will Phil do next?
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