Darkness pushes Phil’s comeback to extra day

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Phil Mickelson had everything go his way Sunday in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

He just couldn’t beat the darkness.

On a wild day of weather even by Pebble Beach standards, sunshine gave way to a hail storm that covered the greens in a sheet of white in a matter of minutes. The delay kept Mickelson from finishing off a remarkable rally in which he turned a threeshot deficit against Paul Casey into a three-shot lead until it was too dark to finish the last two holes.

Mickelson at least wanted to try.

“I can see fine,” he said to a PGA Tour rules official as they walked up the 16th fairway. “I don’t want to put Paul in a bad spot.”

Casey simply couldn’t see, and we realized it was not possible to finish all 18 holes — “We can’t finish two holes in six minutes,” he said to the official — he opted to mark his ball on the 16th green.

Mickelson already made his par on the 16th and was 6-under for the day, with no bogeys on his card, and 18-under for the tournament. Casey has a 3-foot par putt to stay three shots behind when they return at 11 a.m. ET Monday (Golf Channel) to play the par-3 17th and the par-5 18th.

Lost in the late start — one-hour delay from rain, a two-hour suspension from hail — was sheer brilliance from the 48year-old Mickelson who didn’t come remotely close to making a bogey and was on the brink of a fifth victory in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

His first one also was a Monday finish, when players returned in August — more than six months later — to finish the third round of the weather-plagued tournament to make it official.

“We’ve got two tough holes left and I don’t want to jump the gun and get past that,” Mickelson said. “I know a lot can happen in these two holes and they have happened in the past, so I want to stay focused and just come out tomorrow and try to finish it off. I wish we could do it tonight.” —