Mickelson returns to scene of spectacular crash
Whether it was at Winged Foot in 2006 where Phil Mickelson lost his best chance to win the U.S. Open is up for debate.
It certainly was the most memorable, if not spectacular.
A tee shot off the hospitality tent that caromed into yellow grass that had been trampled by a week’s worth of spectators. A 3-iron that struck a tree. A shot that started between hospitality chalets and trees and hooked only far enough to catch a buried lie in the bunker left of the green. An explosion shot that raced off the green into 6 inches of rough.
A double bogey, turning his one-shot lead into another runner-up finish.
Mickelson crouched on the green when his hopes were gone, head in his
Phil Mickelson reacts after missing his bogey putt on the 18th during the final round of the U.S. Open.
hands. “I am such an idiot,” he said later, an endearing example of how for all his miscues, no one owns it like Mickelson.
He returns to Winged Foot 14 years later, still missing the final piece of a career Grand Slam, more realistic than ever.
“I would like to at least be competitive and give myself
a reasonable chance,” he said Saturday at the Safeway Open, his final tuneup for a U.S. Open that has been moved to September. “I drove it very poorly all week at Winged Foot in ‘06 and my short game was phenomenal. It was the best short-game week of my career. I need to strike it better.”
He thought back to Harding Park last month at the PGA Championship where he thought he hit the ball well, only to struggle on the greens.
“If I put it together, I think I can be competitive,” he said. “And that’s what I would like to do is have one or more good chances at it.”
Mickelson is 50. The oldest U.S. Open champion was Hale Irwin, who was 45 when he won at Medinah in 1990. The oldest winner of any major was Julius Boros, who was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship.
Sure, Tom Watson was an 8-foot putt away from winning the British Open at age 59. Greg Norman was 53 when he took a two-shot lead into the final round at Royal Birkdale in 2008. That’s links golf. The U.S. Open is different, and Winged Foot has a history of being a beast.
Mickelson wasn’t the only player who regrets the final hour of that 2006 U.S. Open.
Colin Montgomerie also made double bogey on the 18th hole and finished one shot behind, and he was in the middle of the fairway, 172 yards away with a 7-iron in his hand and the most repeatable swing in golf. He chunked it so badly that Montgomerie was heard saying, “What kind of shot was that?”
Jim Furyk earlier had a 5-foot par putt on the last hole that he looked at from every direction before missing, leaving him one shot behind.
Winged Foot was his fourth silver medal at the U.S. Open. He picked up another in 2009 at Bethpage Black, and perhaps his biggest opportunity was at Merion in 2013, when he twice made bogey with a wedge in his hand, from the tee box at the par-3 13th and from the fairway on the 15th.
Mickelson gets another chance.
Even that was in doubt at the start of the year when it looked as though he might have to qualify. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down golf a month later, the USGA had no choice but to go to an all-exempt U.S. Open, and it expanded the world ranking category from the top 60 to top 70. Mickelson was No. 61. HORSFIELD LATEST TO WITHDRAW WITH POSITIVE TEST >> Sam Horsfield became the second player in two days to test positive for the coronavirus without any symptoms, knocking him out of the U.S. Open after he had traveled from England.
Horsfield, who won twice during the European Tour’s “U.K. Swing” to earn one of 10 spots in the U.S. Open, tested negative in a pre-arrival test taken last week. Upon arrival in New York, his nasal swab test was asymptomatic positive.
Scottie Scheffler withdrew Sunday after a positive test.