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Thursday, June 15 |
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Mickelson walking tall in Tiger's world
Though there is always the chance that a Michael Campbell could come out of the pack, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson stand apart going into this week's US Open at Winged Foot. Woods, at 30, already has 10 majors under his belt. Mickelson, 36 tomorrow, has just the three but, having won last year's PGA Championship along with the 2006 Masters, he is the player more obviously in form.
Tiger's world: But Phil Mickelson is the form player going ino the Open
The big question is how Woods' nine-week lay off, taken around his father's death, is going to affect him. Can he possibly be operating on all cylinders when his last competitive round was on the Sunday of the Masters?
Woods himself says he is excited with the way he is playing and that he is here to win. Campbell, his Maori beliefs to the fore, is among those who believe that he could be all the more dangerous because of what has happened. "Tiger's going to be thinking that his dad is still with him... It's going to empower him," suggested the defending champion.
Another former US Open champion, 1973 winner Johnny Miller, has an interesting take on the Woods v Mickelson rivalry. "If," he suggested, "Phil were playing in a different group from Tiger on Saturday and Sunday, he'd be better than Tiger. But face to face, I think Tiger is still better than Phil." To make his point further, Miller added eloquently: "There are guys who can waltz round Tiger but they can't waltz with him."
Mickelson, who has spent 10 days practising at Winged Foot, has said nothing to contradict the Miller view. In truth, there were many who liked Mickelson rather more as he conceded: "This is Tiger's world, I just live in it."
Out of an encouragingly sizeable European contingent, David Howell and Luke Donald would seem to offer the best chance of a first British US Open victory since Tony Jacklin won at Hazeltine in 1970.
Howell, whose ranking has now risen to ninth in the world, just ahead of Donald (11th), laughs at the memory of his first US Open, at nearby Bethpage Black in 2002. He was coming back from a broken arm and knew it was too soon to be testing the limb. However, on the grounds that it might be his only chance to play in a US Open, he decided to give it a go - and duly missed the cut.
At that stage, Howell was under the impression that the top players were better than they really were. "I would look at someone like Lee Janzen, who had won two US Opens, and my jaw would drop," he recalls. "It took me years to appreciate that even if someone has won a couple of these things, it doesn't mean he is going to play like a major champion every day of the week."
Looking back at his own golf game in 2002, Howell will tell you that he was "an OK player" but one who was light years removed from being able to cope with a US Open venue.
Today, like Donald, he has all the right credentials to compete. Aside from a share of 11th place in last year's Masters, he defeated Woods down the stretch in the 2006 HSBC Champions Tournament in Shanghai last November, and more recently he won the BMW Championship at Wentworth. "I look around this week and there's no one here I haven't beaten before," he notes.
This morning Howell will be watching the golf on television prior to a starting time which ruins any possibility of him getting stuck into England's World Cup game. The idea, here, is to get a feel for the course. "If 30 or 40 people are two or three under par, you know that it's going be very playable and you set your sights accordingly," he said.
Meanwhile, there was a question which had to be asked of Niclas Fasth yesterday. Did he have any new clubs in his bag? "I'm not going to tell you," laughed the Swede, who knew at once that his guilty secret was out - namely that he and Denmark's Thomas Bjorn are both doing what you would not believe of two full-blooded males in carrying a Callaway nine-wood.
Though Bjorn was beginning to have second thoughts, a nine-wood is apparently the perfect answer to escaping the first cut of the Winged Foot rough.
By Lewine Mair in New York |
posted by ^%&^
@ 10:02 AM
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