‘I’m playing well enough to do it:’ Phil Mickelson blisters back nine at PGA

Phil Mickelson, his ball pegged into the ground on the 1st hole on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, his name announced during Thursday’s first round of the PGA Championship, stared down the fairway on the 396-yard par-4 for 13 seconds. At the end of last month, at the Valspar Championship, the 50-year-old five-time major winner had blamed a missed cut on a lack of concentration, and said that he was “trying all different things to be able to elongate my ability to stay focused.” This pause clearly looked like, if not a different thing, something, and he teed off.

Mickelson sliced his 3-wood low and left. He’d hit his second shot into the sand right of the green and bogey the hole. After a birdie on the 3rd, he’d bogey 4, then 5, then 6. If he was trying to focus, this was a dizzying blur. 

Turns out, he just needed his round to elongate. 

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Over the final two-thirds of his round, considered the more difficult stretch at Kiawah, Mickelson made five birdies and no bogeys, finished with a two-under 70 and is tied for eighth, three shots behind leader Corey Conners. 

“I’ve made progress,” Mickelson said after his round. “If you look at week-to-week-to-week, I’ve been making a lot of progress, and the challenge, the guys out here are so good. They are so talented. The course setups are very penalizing that you’ve got to be focused every shot, and if I lose my focus on any holes out of 72, the field here is going to eat me up and so that’s the big challenge for me to get in contention.

“But I’m enjoying the challenge and I’m playing well enough to do it, but I just need to be present on every shot.”

Mickelson was, starting at 7. 

On the 579-yard par-5, he was home in two and two-putted for a 4. Mickelson then birdied four of the nine holes on the back. On the 447-yard, par-4 10th, after nearly hitting his tee shot into the water right of the hole, he hit his approach to 4 feet. On the 593-yard, par-5 11th, he again two-putted for a birdie. On the 466-yard, par-4 15th, he hit his approach, from 174 yards out, to 6 feet. On the 608-yard, par-5 16th, he hit his third shot to 5 feet. 

Then, on the lengthy and breezy par-3 17th, after a tee shot into the sand left of the green, Mickelson dropped a shot from 57 feet away to 2 feet on his way to a 3. As he walked out, out came his usual grin.

“I bogeyed 4, 5 and 6 and was able to kind of steady the round and play the downwind as we turned downwind in a few under partaking advantage of the par 5s, 7 and 11, and sneaking a birdie in on 10 and then the last five holes, which are really tough, I played them in two under,” Mickelson said.

“That was really where I made up a lot of ground on the field because those are tough holes back into the wind, and I would have been happy playing them in even and getting in at even par not doing too much damage. But I made a couple of good shots on 15 and 16 to make birdies.”