Mickelson Making Accurate Statement

This will not be good news for a lot of people. Phil Mickelson is healthy, he has lost weight and he’s excited about playing. More important, he’s keeping his golf ball on the fairway. What’s more, his putts are falling so quickly into the bottoms of the holes, the balls must be allergic to grass.

So far at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, it’s a brand new year for a brand new man, and Mickelson is celebrating like crazy. He followed his second-round 63 with an equally pleasant 64 in Friday’s sunshine at the Palmer Course at PGA West. When he wakes up this morning, he will not only be refreshed, he will also be the leader of the golf tournament.

“It’s a nice start,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d say it’s a dream start, but it’s a nice start to the year.”

It is a chirpy, relaxed, beaming Mickelson who has shown up here in the desert to turn himself around. After failing to win a tournament last year for the first time since 1999, after dropping to 13th in the world rankings and to 38th on the money list and after nearly losing his wife during a difficult pregnancy, Mickelson was more than happy to turn the page on 2003 and get 2004 off to a flying start.

How’s it going so far? Let’s just say that Mickelson is playing a little game of 21. That is, he’s 21 under par, which means Mickelson is two shots ahead of Jay Haas and Ben Crane, three shots ahead of the suddenly rejuvenated Paul Azinger and Todd Fischer and he’s within sight of the tournament record of 36 under par.

With La Quinta on his plate for today and then a return trip to the Palmer Course, it’s probably not going to be easy for Mickelson to go that low. If only he could have a couple more dates at Indian Wells Country Club, where he had his 63 on Thursday, that would probably clinch it.

The scoring average Friday at Indian Wells was 67.3, almost a full five shots below par. Robert Gamez, who had a 60 Friday at Indian Wells, moved from a tie for 74th to a tie for 10th.

Since the PGA Tour began individual course scoring statistics in 1983, it is the single lowest scoring day the cozy, canyon course has ever seen.

Haas double bogeyed the first hole at Indian Wells, then turned it on and went 10 under par the rest of the way. His 64 on Friday meant his 54-hole total of 197 is only two shots off Mickelson’s pace.

“I didn’t get too panicky after the first hole because I knew the course usually yields a lot of birdies,” said Haas, who predicted that the winning score would be around 30 or 32 under, depending on weather conditions.

Crane finished off his 65 at La Quinta and then said he hadn’t looked at the leaderboard and didn’t care to.

As for the 44-year-old Azinger, he couldn’t be having much more fun, especially because he’s no longer trying to compensate for a bad back that affected his swing and sabotaged his confidence the last two years. He has been a model of consistency lately, much like his 66 Friday at La Quinta.

It has been a long way back, Azinger said.

“I saw no hope, no end in sight. Nothing was really helping. Plus, my back was killing me.”

He started noticing some improvement after hooking up with Jim Hardy, who positioned Azinger closer to the ball, more on top of it.

Staying on top of it isn’t easy around here.

This is the degree of difficulty a player deals with on these tracks. If you go low, really low, you’re keeping pace with the field. But if you don’t, you fall back. That’s what happened to 36-hole leader Kenny Perry, whose three-under 69 at Bermuda Dunes looked sort of pale considering he fell from first to a four-way tie for sixth because of it.

Perry, a NASCAR fan, said he clearly was not passed in the turn, no matter how it appeared.

“No, I think I blew a left front tire. I wiped out.”

Meanwhile, Mickelson is thriving, a condition due largely to greater accuracy. Last year, he was 189th on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy, but Mickelson has hit 31 of 41 fairways in three rounds and that puts him in a tie for 23rd. Plus, he is tied for 13th in greens in regulation after ranking 107th a year ago.

Mickelson said all the hard work he put in during the off-season is paying off. He should be able to find out how much on Sunday.