He’s Still Looking for His Diamond in the Rough

Much of the talk leading to the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club concerned grass, or more precisely, the rough.

Players have been gabbing about it in small groups soon after they park their gleaming black luxury courtesy cars in front of the sturdy brick clubhouse. They shake their heads, furrow their brows and fall all over themselves as they attempt to describe just how mean the stuff really is.

They choose their words carefully, but what they’re saying amounts to this: How tough is the rough?

For at least one player, this is sort of a silly topic. You want to talk about rough, Phil Mickelson can tell you about rough.

Rough is when you’ve played 45 majors and haven’t won a single one. In fact, this isn’t only rough, this is almost impossible.

At least it has been that way for Mickelson.

Rough at Oak Hill is 40 acres of bluegrass and rye grass, about four inches high.

Rough for Phil Mickelson is nearly 12 full years of blues and misery in majors, about as high as you can stack it.

Any discussion of Mickelson and majors must begin with the premise that Mickelson deserves much better treatment than what he has been getting at majors, which have been slapping him upside the head and slamming the door on his foot for far too long now.

Look at it this way: If Ben Curtis can win the first major he plays, if Rich Beem can win a major, if Mark Brooks, Corey Pavin, Paul Lawrie and Steve Elkington can win majors, then surely Mickelson has to be in line somewhere.

Maybe it’s going to be his turn next. He got off to a great start Thursday when he shot a four-under 66 at Oak Hill, where he has a share of the first-round lead. He is right there with Rodney Pampling, whose major moments are not as extensive as Mickelson’s, but are not without heartbreak.

At the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie, Pampling led after the first round, but shot 86 in the second and missed the cut.

It probably helps that Pampling’s wife, Angela, is a clinical psychologist. Perhaps she would consider expanding her practice and listening to Mickelson tell his saga.

It couldn’t hurt. Mickelson seems completely open to trying anything in an effort to end his major-less streak.

He has taken the week off before a major and he has played the week before a major. Last Sunday at the International, Mickelson tied for sixth. He has practiced the day before the tournament and he has taken it off. Mickelson spent Wednesday afternoon tossing footballs at the nearby training camp of the Buffalo Bills.

The goal-line symbolism was unmistakable. Someone asked Mickelson if he would consider a career in football. Only if it’s flag football, he said.

Until that time, Mickelson is going to have to direct his skills toward winning a major championship. After his opening round, Mickelson said all the right things, that it was only one day, that there’s a lot of golf to go, that it was a nice start and that he was hungry.

Think about it. You’re working on an 0-for-45 streak in majors and you would be hungry too. Only that’s not what Mickelson meant. He was hungry after playing a five-hour round and missing lunch.

That’s all right too, because you can’t expect a player to win a major if there is a chance he could be distracted by his stomach rumbling.

Mickelson and Mickelson watchers know his record in majors is very good without being great.

He has been third at the Masters three years running and has seven top-10 finishes in the last nine years at Augusta National. At the U.S. Open, Mickelson has been second two times in the last five years.

His best result in 11 trips to the British Open was a tie for 11th three years ago at St. Andrews, but Mickelson has been strong in the PGA Championship with three top 10s in the last four years, including a runner-up finish to David Toms at Atlanta Athletic Club in 2001.

Add it up and the only reasonable theory is that Mickelson has the game, but his timing is off. And that is exactly what’s bugging him these days. Mickelson has grown weary of standing in line. He is tired of answering why he hasn’t won a major and when he expects to change that.

If it were that simple, Mickelson might say, he would have corrected this small oversight a long time ago. Then he could show up at any NFL camp he wanted the day before a major started and fire as many tight spirals as he wished, with nothing else on his mind except how to deal with what’s really rough, the grassy kind.