Mickelson returns with scrambling 68
Phil Mickelson hit his opening tee shot so poorly in morning rain and cold that he hit a provisional ball just to get in another swing.
He scrambled to par the hole and managed to shoot a 4-under-par 68 on Thursday at the CareerBuilder Challenge in La Quinta (Riverside County), leaving him four strokes back in his return from two sportshernia surgeries.
“I struck it horrible, but I scored out of my mind,” Mickelson said. “So, I’m very happy with it.”
Lefty hooked his first tee shot into the trees at La Quinta Country Club, then reloaded and hit the provisional in the fairway.
“That next hole, the second hole’s an extremely difficult drive and I wanted to just get another swing,” Mickelson said.
He found the first ball and hammered a shot under the trees to just off the front of the green.
“It was really a great day for me because I scored so much better than I played,” Mickelson said. “And when I finally did hit some really good shots, I ended up close and made a few birdies. And when I hit some really bad shots — and I hit some really bad shots — I was still able to salvage some upand-downs for pars.”
Tour rookie Dominic Bozzelli shot a 64 on the Stadium Course at PGA West, the most difficult of the event’s three courses, to top the leaderboard. He holed out from 115 yards for eagle on the par-4 14th.
Jhonattan Vegas, the 2011 champion, was a stroke back at 65, with Harold Varner III, Hudson Swafford and Patton Kizzire. Vegas and Kizzire played PGA West’s Jack Nicklaus Tournament Course, and Varner and Swafford opened at La Quinta. Tour Champions: Defending champion Duffy Waldorf, Bernhard Langer and Marco Dawson shot 8-under 64s to share the first-round lead at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Kona, Hawaii.
John Daly and Fred Couples were among four players a stroke back in the 54-hole event, which ends Saturday. European Tour: Henrik Stenson chipped in from 30 yards and had seven more birdies to open the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship with an 8-under 64 for a two-stroke lead in his first competitive round of 2017.