An Open Mind

The watch is always there, on his wrist, because even on the golf course, in the midst of a tournament, Phil Mickelson likes to keep track of the time.

The leaderboard doesn’t provide quite enough information. He monitors action on adjacent fairways. He asks marshals and television cameramen for reports on players who came through earlier.

His mind--always spinning, churning--kicks into high gear when he finds himself in a tight spot, in the rough or the trees. Angles must be calculated, obstacles accounted for, wind and terrain factored into the equation. The game becomes interesting.

No thoughts of laying up. No chipping out to save par.

“I love being creative and trying to make birdies from behind trees,” he says. “When I go play, that’s what makes it fun.”

Golf the Mickelson way has produced enough thrills and surprises for 21 career victories on the PGA Tour, earning its practitioner millions a year in purses and endorsements, ranking him second behind Tiger Woods. It has won him a legion of fans.

It also has produced inglorious catastrophe, a feast-or-famine routine in which bogey follows birdie, par being the exception. Critics have various theories on this dynamic. Some call him a choker, others say he is reckless. A few have ventured into the pathological, suggesting a gambler’s compulsion.

Their assertions are fueled by a simple fact: For all his success, Mickelson is the best player never to have won a major. He is 0 for 40 in golf’s biggest events. He knows the whispers will resume, as persistent as ever, when he tees off in the British Open at Muirfield on Thursday.

The critics want him to change. He says they don’t understand how his mind works.

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On a sweltering July day--the hottest in northern Michigan in decades--Mickelson has come to the town of Gaylord for the Par-3 Shootout, a made-for-television skins game, a working vacation on the way to Scotland. The 32-year-old finds a place in the shade, a low wall beyond the clubhouse, to talk.

Words pour out, not especially fast but with great quantity and sincerity, sometimes curving like a soft fade from one topic to the next. Asked about life away from the game, he mentions a fly fishing trip. Skiing with his wife. His pilot’s license. “I do like aerobatics,” he says.

Aerobatics? Loops and rolls? Before the question can be uttered, Mickelson launches into another subject: quantum gravity, which unites quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity.

“It’s basically a discussion of how the space-time continuum is affected by gravity and how, theoretically, it’s possible even though improbable to skip into different elements of time, whether it’s going through a black hole ... “

He pauses a moment.

“That’s improbable because of how strong the gravitational pull is. If the Earth was to be engulfed by a black hole, it would come out three-quarters of an inch around.... “

His hands cup to approximate the size of a compressed planet.

“It’s more probable to go forward in time given that light is bent by gravity,” he continues. “If we can travel faster than the speed of light we might be able to intersect different intervals of time.”

The conversation leaps to ion propulsion and the escape velocity of the moon, which leads to a discussion of overpopulation and the prospect of colonizing other planets.

“I’m thinking big picture,” he says. “Way past my lifetime.”

Two thousand miles away, in Arizona, Steve Loy chuckles. In the late 1980s, Loy coached Mickelson at Arizona State, where the left-hander won three NCAA championships, joining Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only players to capture the college and U.S. Amateur titles in the same year. Just as impressive to his coach, he earned enough credits to graduate with a psychology degree.

“In four years,” Loy says. “Not a single summer class.”

Loy knew what to expect when Mickelson turned professional in 1992 and asked him to come aboard as his agent. Meetings to discuss travel plans, scheduling and business interests have always been conducted in a certain fashion.

“When I put business in front of him, it has to be very specific and very precise or his mind will already be going on to something else before I can complete the mission,” Loy says. “Phil always has a lot of things going on internally. He’s always thinking.”

In sports, thinking is eyed with suspicion. When does it become a distraction?

Much of Mickelson’s attention is devoted to family. He recently took an extended break from the tour for the birth of his second daughter, Sophia. Lee Trevino, who played the televised event in Michigan, sees this as significant.

“Maybe golf is not 100% with Phil,” he says. “With Tiger Woods, it’s 100%. It’s like a boxing match where one guy trains a little harder and wears the other guy down.”

There is also Mickelson’s alleged proclivity for gambling.

He has appeared on sports radio to handicap football games and talked about making preseason bets on teams he thinks will win the Super Bowl and World Series. Wagers of $20,000 on the Baltimore Ravens and Arizona Diamondbacks in recent years paid roughly $1 million.

It was all fun and games until the NEC Invitational last August at Firestone in Akron, Ohio. Sitting in the clubhouse, watching Woods and Jim Furyk in a playoff, Mickelson had an inkling Furyk would hole a bunker shot and asked if anyone wanted to give him 25-1 odds.

Mike Weir took the bet, Furyk made the shot and Mickelson pocketed $500. Reporters standing nearby wrote about the wager and, suddenly, Mickelson had an image problem.

Now he says the issue is overblown, that he visits Las Vegas only a few times a year, an assertion supported by a source within the gaming industry. His preseason bets resemble office pools. Mickelson recruits friends and relatives to take part because he likes to be on the telephone--”Did you see that play? Can you believe it?”--while watching games on seven screens in his house.

Of the winnings, Mickelson says his take was only about $100,000. Still, people talk.

“He knows so much about sports they think, ‘What the heck is this guy doing? Is he studying the betting line?’ ” Loy says. “That is not the case. Phil is just a guy who wants to know about everything.”

Which gets back to the way his mind works. Which gets back to the golf course.

Having coached and watched him for 17 years, Loy knows Mickelson will never be the type to hit down the middle, to shoot for par.

“He can’t stand that kind of golf,” Loy says. “He’s always striving, always needing to be challenged. For as long as I have known him, he has always tried to beat the golf course.”

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Other players have watched and wondered, sitting in the locker room, asking: “What the heck did he do that for?”

Arnold Palmer, who made a career of being aggressive, thinks Mickelson should exercise more judgment in choosing his shots, but only occasionally. Like others, he admires the flip side of Mickelson’s audacity, the shots he creates, his willingness to take risks.

“I see him playing to win,” Palmer says. “I like that style.”

Several months ago, Mickelson was chasing Woods at the Bay Hill Invitational when, rather than chipping out of trouble, he attempted a four-iron under the trees and over the water to reach the par-five 16th green. The shot disappeared in the water, as did any chance at victory. Afterward, he received a note.

Don’t change, Palmer wrote. Stay with it.

Further support comes from Trevino, who figures that in triumph or disaster, Mickelson is good for the game. “The fans know they are going to see something,” he says.

As for the major tournament failures, Mickelson’s reaction has ranged from avoidance to anger to, more recently, grinning acceptance. His strategy, however, remains unwavering. He told reporters as much after a five-putt green at the Players Championship last March and reiterated his position at the Michigan skins game.

“When I don’t try a shot that I know I can hit and things don’t work out, I don’t save par or what have you, that’s hard for me to accept,” he says. “If I go for it and hit a bad shot that goes in the water or I make double, that’s all right.”

His mind works that way. And maybe all the theories about his game--the choking, the recklessness, the gambler’s self-destruction--melt away before a simpler truth about a guy who wears a watch on the course and is always calculating the angles.

“If you take that away, golf is too dull,” he says. “My mind wanders.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Mickelson by the Numbers

2 - World ranking

$21.4 - PGA earnings in millions

21 - Victories on tour

40 - Events played in four majors

0 - Victories in four majors

8 - Top-five finishes in four majors

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Unful-Philled

*--* What Phil Mickelson has done at the British Open: 1991, ROYAL BIRKDALE Tied for 73rd Even 1995, ST. ANDREWS Tied for 40th +3 1996, ROYAL LYTHAM & ST. ANNES Tied for 40th Even 1997, ROYAL TROON Tied for 24th Even 1998, ROYAL BIRKDALE 79th +28 1999, CARNOUSTIE Missed cut +13 2000, ST. ANDREWS Tied for 11th -7 2001, ROYAL LYTHAM & ST. ANNES Tied for 30th +1

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How Mickelson has fared this season:

Events...18

Won...2

Runner-up...1

Third...3

Top 10...9

Top 25...14

Made Cut...16

Money...$3,653,426

*--* How Mickelson has finished in the eight major events won by Tiger Woods: WOODS MICKELSON 1997 MASTERS -18 +7 Missed cut 1999 PGA -11 +7 (Tied for 57th) 2000 U.S. OPEN -12 +9 (Tied for 16th) 2000 BRITISH OPEN -19 -7 (Tied for 11th) 2000 PGA -18 -9 (Tied for ninth) 2001 MASTERS -16 -13 (Third) 2002 MASTERS -12 -8 (Third) 2002 U.S. OPEN -3 Even par (Second)

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