Mickelson Clicks on Links Again

He has a loopy grin and a sweet swing and he’s impossible to beat, at least in the last two weeks. So Phil Mickelson took off his wet shoes, surveyed the state of professional golf after a dreary, drizzly, breezy day, and said it’s all perfectly clear to him.

“This is fun,” he said. “It feels pretty good to me.”

Mickelson won the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am by four shots Sunday with a safe but soggy round of 73 that held off Mike Weir and everyone else who tried to ruin his two weeks of domination on the PGA Tour.

This is uncharted but welcome territory for Mickelson and the numbers are simple: Two weeks, two tournaments, two victories.

Too much Phil, obviously.

“It really feels terrific to follow up last week’s performance with another very good performance,” he said. “Sometimes when you play really well and you get it going, it falls away the next week.”

Check the calendar and you’ll see that’s not what happened. On Feb. 6, he won at Scottsdale, Ariz., by five shots and a week later he won by four, a two-week stretch of success unmatched in his 13-year career. He had a 60 at Scottsdale and a round of 62 here Thursday.

Mickelson’s nine-shot margin of victory the last two weeks equals his last eight tournament victories combined, three of them playoffs.

His 269 total was 19 under par and was one shot short of Mark O’Meara’s tournament record, set in 1997. With Mickelson beginning the day with a seven-shot lead, the tournament was all but over Saturday, unless Mickelson got blindsided by a whale. With Weir firmly the runner-up, Greg Owen, the qualifying school rookie and refugee from the European Tour, shot a 72 and was third at 13-under 275.

Tim Clark tied for fourth with Paul Goydos, who shot a one-under 71 for his best tournament finish in six years.

After hugging his young daughters on the 18th green, Mickelson had time to tie up some loose ends.

Add the winner’s check of $954,000 to Mickelson’s bank account and he leads the PGA Tour money list with slightly more than $2 million.

But money alone is an incomplete accounting of how Mickelson has fared in his two-week stand as the top player in the world.

Mickelson has either led or been tied for the lead in seven consecutive rounds. It was the first time in his career that he was a wire-to-wire winner. It also was the first time he has won in consecutive weeks.

His 25th victory ties Vijay Singh, Johnny Miller and Tommy Armour for 21st place on the all-time list.

Mickelson is one-fourth of golf’s so-called Big Four -- Singh, Tiger Woods and Ernie Els are the rest of the quartet -- but Singh was the only other part of the foursome who played at Scottsdale and this week. Singh missed the cut here.

Weir, whose 67 was the only round in the 60s in trying weather conditions, said Mickelson is playing better than anyone but added a disclaimer.

“Well, the last two weeks, yeah,” he said. “He is playing great, [but] you know Vijay has been in the field the last couple weeks, Ernie hasn’t been here [or] Tiger, but he is playing the best of the field that’s here.”

The next time the Big Four show up at the same tournament will be in two weeks at the $7.5-million Accenture Match Play Championship, but because it’s not a stroke-play event, there’s no guarantee any of them will face each other.

Weir found himself all alone in trying to take down Mickelson, but he had two factors working against him. He was 10 shots behind to start the day, and he missed enough birdie putts to fill Stillwater Cove.

Mickelson’s lead was nine shots over Owen after four holes, and his lead, this time over Weir, was down to seven when Mickelson made a bogey at the ninth. It was down to five when Weir birdied the ninth and 11th, then down to four when Mickelson made a bogey at the 10th when he missed the fairway in the deep rough to the left and wound up missing a 14-footer for par.

Weir was steady from tee to green -- he missed three fairways the last three days and none Sunday -- but he didn’t steer enough putts into the hole for birdies. At the 12th, he had a 52-footer stop an inch short.

“Every one looked good, as soon as they left the putter right until the end,” he said. “It was kind of a shock that a couple didn’t go in.

“If I could have gotten just a few more to fall ... “

Instead, he missed a 14-footer at the 13th and a 21-footer at the 14th. When his 13-footer stayed out of the 16th hole, that was it for Weir. Mickelson’s round was largely uneventful -- three bogeys and two birdies, and only pars after 11 -- but he didn’t need to do much except steer the ball around the course and try not to fall in the ocean.

“I was just trying to get through the first 10 holes without making a big mistake,” he said.

“I thought it was a day where I could beat myself because the conditions were so tough. It was a day I needed to strike the ball well because my misses would be magnified with the wind and could lead to bogeys, doubles or worse.”

Actually, it was a day, or at least a tournament, when nobody could beat Mickelson, and now it’s two weeks in a row. Too much Phil indeed.