Scottish Open: Struggling Phil Mickelson left with plenty to reflect upon

Blowing a gale? “A lot of fun”. Torrential rain? “Great fun.” Landslides? “Fun, fun, fun.” Yesterday, after an error-strewn and at times comic 73 during which he came perilously close to fishing his ball out of the Moray Firth on a number of occasions, he used the word just the once. One fun! Given his  normally upbeat personality it was, more or less, an admission of abject misery.

Phil’s going through it right now. If you were being diplomatic you would say he was struggling. This was his eighth straight round in the 70s, his eighth straight round without breaking par, a combined 26-over par in the dog days of June and July. He’s hitting some strange shots out there. He’s standing in the middle of fairways, as he did on the ninth here, and missing the target by a veritable mile. He’s standing on the tee knowing that a driver is not the right club, as he did on the 12th, but he’s hitting it anyway – and making double-bogey. The only reason he’s here at all is because he’s desperate to get something going in his game. The plan was to stay in Italy with the family all week, but he bailed out. And the fact that his wife, Amy, suggested he bail out  tells you something about the state of his game right now. When the missus tells you to cut short the family holiday and go back to work, then something is badly wrong.

“The last two months I have played very poorly and I added this week because I need to play a little bit more and I’m hoping to get a good round tomorrow so that I can play the weekend. I think this course is a great place to play links golf and get ready for the Open. It’s a wonderful test and it’s a fun course to play.

“We are on a family vacation this week in Europe so I thought I would go over to Lytham at the weekend and spend Saturday and Sunday there to give me a few extra days practice. But after playing poorly last week (he shot 71, 71 and missed the cut at the Greenbrier) I felt like I needed to get into a competition and get out there trying to score. I’m not just throwing one or two shots away on the golf course, I’m throwing away five or six, so I’ve got to try to get that resolved.

“It’s just one of those things where I make a couple of sloppy swings here and there or poor decisions. I think the more I play, the better I get in that good mindset of focusing on each shot, which is why I added this week.

Mickelson flew into Scotland late on Wednesday and, although his tee-time wasn’t until 1.15pm, he was out there on the practice ground from early morning. “We were over in Italy,” he said. “My oldest daughter is very big into Greek and Roman history so we have been over in Rome the last few days. They were at the Vatican today and I was supposed to stay with them until Friday but I needed to get a little more play time in. My family were okay about it. I’ve got the greatest wife I could ever ask for. She’s very supportive. In fact, she and I both had the same idea at the same time.”

In search for his redemption on the golf course, Mickelson could have wandered about the Vatican and looked to the man above. “You the Man, God, gimme back my game!” But this is no Bubba Watson we’re talking about here. His faith, if he has any, is his own business, not something he parades at the drop of a hat. “You know I’ve never been a big fan of that. I just think that everybody is looked on equally so you’ve got to make your own destiny.”

So instead of saying prayers, he took instruction, “Bones” Mackay, his faithful caddie, by his side. You should have heard the two of them. On every tee-box, on every fairway, on every patch of rough and on all greens they chatted and chatted and chatted. Famously, these two deconstruct a shot more than most. If you think it’s rocket science, it’s not. Mostly, it’s a suggestion of a shot to be hit, followed by analysis of the shot, indecision about whether it’s right shot, uncertainty about the right club before they return to where they started and hit the shot they were originally talking about. Here they are on the fourth tee, the 184-yard par 3.

Phil: “I’m gonna let you pull it, Bones.”

Bones: “I’m thinking a low 6.

Phil: “Not a 5?”

Bones: “5 is okay but you got the wind into you and you gotta stay clear of that stuff there. I’m  liking the 6.”

Phil: “Looks a heck of a long way for a 6.”

Bones: “The flags are shorter here. Not as far as you think. You happy with five.”

Phil: “I’ll go with 6.”

While all this is happening, his playing partner Paul Lawrie stands beside his caddie, his teenage son, Craig, who seems to have added to his 16 years by the time Phil gets his tee shot away. “That’s all I got in the six department, Bones,” says Phil as the ball is in the air. It finds the green, no problem. Bones has done his job. It’s about 40 feet right of the flag, though. Phil, again, hasn’t done his.

They were a pair of tortured souls. On the sixth, Mickelson smashes one towards trouble and Bones shouts “Hit it wind!” when there was no wind to speak of. If there was a breeze it wasn’t strong to blow paper not to mind a golf ball in flight. They shook their heads in frustration at the zero impact this imaginary wind had on his drive. Onwards to the seventh. Phil is dead centre of the fairway and ready to fire. Away in the gallery a bloke clears his throat with awful consequences. “Holy cow!” says Bones, half looking at Phil’s ball careering towards the Moray Firth (it stops just short), half looking at the dude with a mouthful of phlegm. “Thanks a lot!” says Bones. “You got your money on somebody else?” Bones looks at Phil, Phil looks at Bones. Like twins, they sigh and shake their heads simultaneously. Phil makes bogey. This is not how it was meant to be.

“We all go through these spells in our career,” he says later, and you have to salute him for standing there and talking about it even when it was patently obvious that he didn’t want to. Moments earlier, the infantile Colin Montgomerie declined to speak – and he was strokes better than Mickelson. “It’s only been three tournaments,” continued the American. “I’ve only played three tournaments in the last six weeks. I haven’t been in a competitive frame of mind and that’s what I’m working on now. I’ve just got to go play more and shoot a good score because it doesn’t feel like any part of my game is off, it just feels like I’m not putting it together on the course. The more I play the  better it seems to get.

“I’ve really come to enjoy links golf and I’ve come to play better and better at it through my career. But I’ve got to start executing links shots because it doesn’t matter how well you know a course; unless you start executing the shots it doesn’t matter. I got here at 9am to get a three or four-hour practice session in and I’ll be doing the same again the next few days.”

Let’s hope he gets another few days. At the moment, it’s hard to know where Mickelson’s game is going to bring him next.