Lefty says no drivers for British Open
SOUTHPORT, ENGLAND » Royal Birkdale and Torrey Pines would seem to have nothing in common except that Phil Mickelson is playing major championships on both without a driver in his bag.
Mickelson carried only the 3-wood with him during his practice round Tuesday at the British Open, and he plans to keep it that way.
“We won’t be playing in this wind,” Mickelson said as he finished up his round with a light blowing toward the Irish Sea. “And when we get the normal wind, there really isn’t a driver for me until we get to 15. And then that brings the bunkers into play.”
Mickelson, who once had two drivers in his bag at the Masters, didn’t hit a driver in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. He wasn’t much of a factor that week and finished five shots out of the playoff that Tiger Woods won over Rocco Mediate.
Mickelson instead has four wedges, including a 64-degree sand wedge that he can use for flop shots off tight lies on a links course. He also has two 3-irons, one of them with the loft tweaked to make a strong, driving club.
The 3-wood is the same club he had when he won the British Open at Muirfield in 2013, his last victory.
“It’s a much easier club for me to hit low,” Mickelson said on Golf Channel. “So even into the wind, I hit it every bit as far as I hit a driver.”
TIGER FALLING
Tiger Woods is out of golf for the rest of the season as he recovers from a fourth back surgery, and that means he finally is out of the top 1,000 players listed in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Woods is at No. 1,005 in the world this week, one spot ahead of Henric Sturehed of Sweden.
That’s no surprise. In the two-year counting period, Woods has only seven tournaments on his record and he earned ranking points at just three of them — a tie for 18th in the Greenbrier in 2015, a tie for 10th in the Wyndham Classic that same year and his 15thplace finish at the no-cut Hero World Challenge in December.
Woods was at No. 1 for 683 weeks, twice as long as anyone else in the history of the ranking that dates to 1986.
GETTING AWAY
Brooks Koepka won the U.S. Open, headed off to Las Vegas and hasn’t been seen in the golfing world since then. That’s just the way he had it planned. Koepka is playing for the first time since that four-shot victory at Erin Hills. He had a big stretch at the end of the year with two majors, a World Golf Championship, the four FedEx Cup playoff events and the Presidents Cup, so he wanted to be fresh.
“I found it pretty easy to get away,” Koepka said. “I was not looking for a break, but I kind of needed one, more mentally than anything. And it was nice to have a few weeks off. But last week I started getting into it and getting antsy to get back out here.”
He didn’t put the clubs away, playing plenty of golf and working on his game when he got back home to Florida. He arrived at Birkdale on Saturday.
“It felt good to get out here and play some holes and actually feel like you’re back in the normal routine,” he said.