Mickelson fit and ready to go

Phil Mickelson will make his first PGA TOUR start in 2015 next week at the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation.

Perhaps fittingly for a tournament that emphasizes a healthy lifestyle, Mickelson expects to be in peak condition.

The 42-time TOUR winner has spent the off-season working out with trainer Sean Cochran in a four-day-a-week program that evidently has provided a quick payoff.

“In the first five or six weeks I’ve had some immediate results,” Mickelson said in a recent story on his website. "I’m getting lighter, developing more core strength and speed and increasing my ball speed. It's been awhile since I felt so at ease."

Entering the year in shape is the first step to what Mickelson hopes will be a bounce-back season after a 2014 campaign that was not up to his standards.

Not only did he fail to win a tournament for the first time since 2003, he produced just one top-10 finish in 21 starts and failed to advance to the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola, the final event of the FedExCup Playoffs.

"The worst year of my career," Mickelson said.

"It was a bad year statistically in all areas," he added. "I didn't drive the ball as well as I can or expected to. My short irons were worse than they've been in my entire career. My short game wasn't really sharp. My putting was not at the level I expect."

After he begins the year at Humana, Mickelson plans to play the Waste Management Phoenix Open followed by the Farmers Insurance Open.

He'll then return home for the final two weeks of the West Coast swing, meaning he'll miss the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am for the first time in 20 years. He also will not play the Northern Trust Open for the second straight year after making seven consecutive starts at Riviera.

“Those are two of my favorite events, two of my favorites courses,” Mickelson said on his site, “but with the kids in two schools with different spring breaks I’ll take that time off. They’ve accommodated my schedule enough over the years. It’s time for me to accommodate theirs.”