Gotta agree completely with Greg, especially...
At 12:42 AM 6/19/2006, Greg Zachmann wrote:
I have to disagree on Mickelson though. Unless he was choking from
the first tee shot on Thursday to the last hole today I don't think
he gagged. He just kept on missing fairways right to the end... How
he can keep on playing to his weaknesses and continue to justify it
is a mystery to me...
It's been said that Phil is a gambler and stubborn. This performance
might be better described by another word starting with the letters
S T U..............................and ending with P I D.
Exactly!
Pretty early in the round, I said to my wife, "One of two things is
going to happen. Either Phil will figure out how to hit fairways the
way he did yesterday, or he'll lose the Open." As it turned out, the
golf gods strung him along far longer than I [or Johnny Miller]
expected. But missing fairways caught up with him in the end.
As for that last hole, STUPID says it perfectly.
He needed par to win, and bogey for a playoff. He knew there was no
way a birdie would help him any more than a par. So why driver? Take
a 4-wood or even an iron, to be in the fairway short of the bunker.
(Even Furyk, who DID need a birdie, saw that.) The way he's been
playing, from the fairway he winds up ANYWHERE on the green and
two-putts for the win. Even if he totally blows one of those shots,
he's in a playoff.
His thinking was even murkier on the second shot. There wasn't even a
one-in-ten chance of being on the green in two. At this point, he
should have been thinking, "I've been deadly from wedge range in the
fairway. Just pitch this to where I can take dead aim for
up-and-down. If it works, I win. If it doesn't, I'm still in a
playoff." (I think Miller describes that as "bogey, option par", but
with Phil's game it's more like "par, worst case bogey".) Instead, he
tried a near-impossible shot and gave a new significance to "What
will Phil do next?"
At least one guy finished strong. The news gossips are probably going
to say that Ogilvy backed into the championship, but those who were
watching know he earned it. And if the golf gods weren't funnin' with
Phil, that would have been even more apparent.
DaveT
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