Lefty Is Suddenly Being Left Behind

Where’d everybody go?

This was Phil Mickelson here, the guy who used to be The Next Thing in golf, and there were more people in line for pretzels than in his gallery at Riviera Country Club.

It wasn’t as if he had a couple of chumps in his threesome, either. Fred Couples and Payne Stewart are solid names in their own right.

But by now, Mickelson should have been big enough to draw fans on his own. How many other guys on the course could say they had won at least one tournament each year from 1993 to 1998? Nobody.

I’m a little worried here. I like Mickelson, the big guy with the awkward gait and easygoing demeanor. He feels like an old high school buddy, even if you’ve just met him for the first time. But he has been left in the dust by his contemporaries, outplayed by David Duval and out-populared by Tiger Woods.

In a field as strong as this Nissan Open, with Woods, Duval and Justin Leonard on hand and guys like Ernie Els and Davis Love III on the leaderboard, Mickelson barely even made the cut of pre-tournament names to watch.

“It’s my own fault,” Mickelson said. “I just haven’t been putting the numbers on the board.”

While Woods has brought more attention to the sport, he also helped raise the level of expectations to unreal heights. Just because he tore up Augusta in his first full year as a pro doesn’t mean he’ll do it every year. And, no, Duval isn’t going to win every event he enters, either.

Mickelson had as many victories (two) as PGA Tour player of the year Mark O’Meara in 1998. O’Meara just happened to win his titles at the Masters and the British Open.

Mickelson won the first tournament of the year at La Costa and won in the rain-suspended Pebble Beach event to help him take home a career-high $1.8 million in earnings. But even though he finished second twice and had nine top-10 finishes, it seemed as though he tailed off.

“I thought I had a pretty good year last year,” Mickelson said. “I was second on the money list with two months to go and I just stopped playing and finished sixth. With two wins, I thought that ’98 was a pretty good year. So I wasn’t disappointed.”

If he wasn’t disappointed, he was overlooked. It continues into this year. When surprise leader Bob Estes rattled off his list of expected contenders Friday, he said, “You’ve got your Ernies, your Tigers, your Davids . . .”

Nothing about your Phils.

It’s easy to be forgotten in the world of golf. The PGA Tour promotes its events and its courses more than the individual players. At other sporting events, fans walk around wearing the jerseys of their favorite stars. Not golf. There are no uniforms and no numbers. In the merchandise tent the only hint of a player-related item for sale was a tiger’s head club cover, just like the one found in you-know-who’s bag.

Still, Mickelson shouldn’t be too hard to miss on the course. At 6 feet 2, he stands among the taller players on the tour, and he plays left-handed.

Mickelson said he actually doesn’t want his name brought up right now.

“Not until I’m playing better,” said Mickelson, who shot a 72 Friday and is seven strokes off the lead after two rounds. “Not until I start scoring a little bit better and getting in contention, like I had been.

“I don’t have a choice in that. Until I start playing better, it’s hard to make any noise.”

He ranks 106th on the tour in scoring average, just a shade below 72.

“I really haven’t been playing poorly,” he said. “I just haven’t been scoring well.”

Mickelson, who started on the back nine Friday, showed he still had that magic touch with the wedges on his 10th hole.

You never root for any player’s shot to land in a bunker, but when it happens to Mickelson it adds a little excitement because it means he’ll get a chance to go to work with his sand wedge. He stepped right in and lofted a shot to within a couple of feet of the hole to save par.

The skills are there. The results haven’t been in the big events.

Mickelson had that “When’s-he-gonna-win-a-major” tag hung on him early in his career. Instead of chafing at the criticism, he joined in the chorus. He’ll be the first to tell you he can’t consider his career to be great until he wins one of the four prime-time tournaments.

But let’s ease up a little. He’s only 28, still a young pup by golf standards. Duval has zero major championships on his resume, and nobody’s letting that detract from his greatness right now.

Mickelson has to keep pace with his contemporaries, though. Stay off the leaderboards for too long these days and you’ll blend right into the endless amount of Bobs and Lees on the tour. That shouldn’t happen to a good guy named Philip Alfred Mickelson.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.