Mickelson in apology over putter storm
‘I am embarrassed. It was not my finest hour’ Mcilroy defends rival for hitting a moving ball
Four days after Phil Mickelson’s ball-swipe saga at the US Open that outraged so many, he finally said sorry. However, Rory Mcilroy came out in support of the left-hander, revealing he had “laughed” when it happened and declaring there had been “a massive overreaction”.
Mickelson said: “I know this should’ve come sooner, but it’s taken me a few days to calm down. My anger and frustration got the best of me last weekend. I’m embarrassed and disappointed by my actions. It was clearly not my finest moment and I’m sorry.”
The controversy began during the third round at Shinnecock Hills on Saturday, when Mickelson missed a putt on the 13th green and chased his ball down the slope before purposefully hitting it back towards the hole as it was in the process of rolling off the green behind a bunker. The United States Golf Association hit the five-time major-winner with a two-shot penalty, although many experts, including Butch Harmon, his former coach, said he should have been disqualified.
Mickelson was unrepentant in the immediate aftermath, extending his “apologies” to “anyone who took offence” but at the same time telling them “to toughen up”.
“I think knowing the rules is never a bad thing,” he added, before claiming it was “strategic” and was not an act “made out of frustration”. However, yesterday he had changed his story and his tune to one of unequivocal contrition.
It is interesting that Mickelson chose to issue his mea culpa via a text to a small group of selected US journalists and not through the USGA, which runs the US Open. It will be intriguing to know if he has apologised personally to the governing body, as he indicated in his brief message that his actions were a furious impulse and were not calculated, as he had first maintained.
Whether Mickelson was angry at his own play – he was 10 over par and out of contention to win his first national championship title – or with the course set-up and wanted to make a point, he did not make clear.
Mickelson has suffered his issues with the USGA before and, in the run-up, had warned that he was “worried” how it might prepare the celebrated layout on Long Island.
Mickelson’s warnings seemed prescient as players came forward at the end of that round to accuse the governing body of “losing the course” and Mike Davis, the USGA chief executive, appeared on TV that evening to confess that at least one of the pin positions had been “too tough”.
But Mickelson continued to come under fire and, by Sunday morning, pundits such as Brandel Chamblee were calling on him “to do the right thing and withdraw”.
Mickelson’s wife, Amy, revealed he had offered to do just that in a phone call to Davis, but was assured his actions had been dealt with by the letter of the rule book.
Certainly Mickelson failed to show any remorse in the final round, actually celebrating as if he had won when holing out for a par on the 13th. And as the cheers of the raucous but ultra-loyal New York fans continued to rain down, a grinning Mickelson refused to talk to the media afterwards, save for a cryptic comment: “I think the real question is what am I going to do next? I don’t know.”
However, as the criticism intensified, with Jason Day, the former world No 1, hinting on Tuesday that he should have been shown the gates, Mickelson and his team might have believed he had no choice. The brand demanded an apology.
Yet Mcilroy plainly did not feel it necessary, as he recorded his empathy in his pre-tournament press conference at the Travelers Championship, which begins in Connecticut today. Despite winning the US Open in 2011, Mcilroy has also, on occasion, been a critic of the USGA and said he understood why Mickelson did it.
“Honestly I laughed,” Mcilroy said. “I thought there was a massive overreaction to it. Knowing Phil, he knew what he was doing. As a player who has been in that head space in that tournament I can see it happening to people.”
Colin Montgomerie does not agree. Despite his own notoriously combustible temperament and his own disagreements with the USGA, the Scot insists he could not imagine a professional behaving in such a manner. Montgomerie lent his own voice to those calling for the rule book to be simplified in this area and for disqualification to be the penalty. He also implied that Mickelson had been generously treated because of his standing.
“I don’t think that’s ever been in the realms and I’ve been frustrated with the USGA’S positioning on certain formats, with getting a course in position where level par wins,” he told Golf.com. “Knowing Phil the way I do and calling Phil a friend, he would love that minute of his life back again. It’ll take a while to get it back. The rules are a grey area on this and they [the USGA] managed to get around it enough to say it wasn’t a DQ. It was right on the edge. Possibly because it was Phil Mickelson, it wasn’t a DQ, if you know what I mean.”