He is from Arizona, which is notable mostly because we’ve never much cared for Arizonans around here.
We howled with delight when Todd Pratt made the Diamondbacks disappear in 1999, and wailed in agony when Luis Gonzalez made a loser out of Mariano Rivera in 2001.
The Giants used to cuff the Cardinals around every year. LBJ made mincemeat out of Barry Goldwater in ’64. And on and on and on.
Yet Greater New York adopts Phil Mickelson whenever he comes within shouting distance of Times Square. Bethpage. Shinnecock Hills. Baltusrol.
No doubt when the U.S. Open comes to Winged Foot next year, there won’t be an establishment anywhere within Westchester County where he’ll have to buy a meal, a beer or a Coke.
“It’s just an amazing feeling from a player’s point of view to have the support, the way they support all of the players,” Mickelson said yesterday, after shooting a typically adventurous 65 at Baltusrol to seize a three-shot lead midway through this 87th PGA Championship. “It’s just an incredible feeling.”
Sure, other players feel the love, too. New York loves its stars, and so Tiger Woods rarely hears a discouraging word from the galleries. Fred Couples gets rock-star treatment. So does John Daly.
But no one – no one – feels more love than Mickelson, who couldn’t be viewed more as O.O.O.O. – One Of Our Own – if he were born in Hell’s Kitchen or Hackensack or Hicksville. Galleries sang “Happy Birthday” to him at Bethpage in 2002. They all but plotted to kidnap Retief Goosen at Shinnecock in order pave Mickelson’s pathway to the Open in ’04.
And yesterday, when it was obvious that Mickelson was on the verge of having one of “those days,” when he was making crazier shots than a pool-hall hustler, making stupid putts, filling his scorecards with lots of crooked numbers, good and bad, they offered him aid and comfort once again.
“I love the feel that the people here provide,” Mickelson said.
How could he not? Golfers aren’t supposed to play home games. Theirs is a road sport. Sure, Arnold Palmer had Oakmont, and Jack Nicklaus has Muirfield Village, and when they’ve played those courses they’ve been treated like Zeus carrying a gap wedge. But Mickelson enjoys a remarkable home-court advantage here. And it helps that he’s often at the top of his game here.
He was yesterday. He electrified the gallery with an eagle at No. 18, and followed that no less than 15 minutes later with a double-bogey at No. 1, but the wonder of Mickelson is that his travails are almost always more interesting than everyone else’s triumphs. He was hot and he was cold, often on the same hole.
“Today was a day,” said Rick Smith, Mickelson’s swing coach, “when I really thought he could shoot 61 or 62.”
Sixty-five was plenty. Sixty-five gives him a three-shot lead on the field heading into today and, more important, a 12-shot lead over Tiger Woods – who surely went to sleep last night plotting how to pull off what would be his greatest parlor trick yet.
Sixty-five sets the home team up nicely.
“It’s nice to be ahead,” Smith said. “Let all the other people worry about you.”
After Mickelson earned the feel-good story of 2004 by winning the Masters on the 72nd hole, he was given one long mulligan by a most affectionate golfing public. He was in contention for the three other majors in ’03, and for none of the first three of ’05, yet there was none of the accompanying angst left over from when his resume was completely major-free.
Still.
If Mickelson retires with one major, there will be a terrible sense that he failed to honor his talent. Mickelson has no desire to live with that. More important, his army of supporters – Lefty’s Legions – have less desire to let it get to that. They begged him at Bethpage. They shepherded him at Shinnecock.
Now they bang the drum at Baltusrol, day after day, hour after hour, hole after hole. They root, root, root for the home team.
If he doesn’t win, it’s a shame.