If They Don’t Like This Course, That’s Tough

As a kid, Phil Mickelson played Torrey Pines three or four times a week. After turning pro, he won the Buick Invitational there three times.

So when he plays it this week, it’s still the South course at Torrey Pines, but it’s not the same track. And it definitely has his attention.

“It’s the hardest golf course I’ve ever played, day in and day out,” he said Tuesday.

The $5.1-million Buick Invitational starts Thursday at its traditional layouts, the approachable North course and the beefed-up, treacherous South course, where the 2008 U.S. Open will be played.

Before the 2002 Buick tournament, the South course was lengthened from 7,055 to 7,568 yards and since then, the scoring average has not been lower than a one-over-par 73. In the 19-year period before renovation, only four times was the South course’s scoring average over par.

This public course is now a public nuisance to the pros. The seventh hole, for instance, is a 462-yard par-four with a green that slopes from back to front. Two of the four par-five holes are longer than 570 yards -- the 571-yard 18th with a lake in front of a green, and the 613-yard ninth.

Still, the tournament has drawn a field of 156 and Tiger Woods is one of them. Woods skipped the first three events of the year but is defending his 2005 title here. Mickelson is one-up on him, having played last week in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, where he shot five rounds under par and tied for fifth, behind winner Chad Campbell, who is also playing here this week.

Campbell has a tie for second at the Sony and a victory last week in the desert, but Mickelson also knows about how to get off to quick starts. In the last 10 years, he’s a combined 141 under par in his first tournament of the year -- including his 19 under at the Hope.

“I think I can improve,” Mickelson said. “Certainly our field is very strong this week, so that translates into a lot tougher to win.”

Also, there aren’t many layouts tougher than the South course, where Mickelson won his first tournament as a pro in 1993. All the changes were made with the U.S. Open in mind and they are many, according to Mickelson.

“They blew up the greens and put in entirely different ones, different grass at different locations, totally different designs,” he said. “So all the local knowledge that I had learned ... is no longer helping me because it’s no longer applicable.

“The [greens] have different grasses, shapes, contours, designs. They started from scratch and redid them all.”

For Woods, the adjustment period has been short. He has won two of the four Buick Invitationals since the South course was redone.

Tom Lehman, who tied for second last year with Charles Howell III and Luke Donald, said the most noticeable change was a simple one:

“You have it hit it longer.”

Mickelson isn’t going that way anymore. He might have earned a reputation for being obsessed with distance, but the left-hander has changed his philosophy, trying now to keep the ball in play, use the correct side of the fairway and play slightly more conservatively. He still averaged 300 yards off the tee in 2005, but that ranked only 26th on the PGA Tour.

And in the last two years he also won his first two majors -- the 2004 Masters and the 2005 PGA Championship.

He took nearly three months off before the Hope and when he went back to work, he studied video of his two major victories with swing coach Rick Smith. Mickelson also worked on his short game with Dave Pelz.

A proponent of a shorter PGA Tour schedule, Mickelson said he was not consulted by Commissioner Tim Finchem about the revamped 2007 schedule that calls for fewer tournaments but may also mean top players will compete together more often.

If that happens, Mickelson said, he is all for it, but ...

“It’s not my job to call every player and get us all together and say, ‘Hey, let’s play these events so we can play together.’ ”

This will be Mickelson’s second tournament in a six-events-in-seven-weeks streak that he hopes will lead to a third major. He said he was excited to be playing again, and that he was even getting a kick out of his sessions with reporters.

“They are a lot more enjoyable than they have been ... ‘Is this the year?’ We don’t have that anymore, so that’s nice. And I am looking forward to playing the majors again. I think what’s so great about winning the PGA is, I’ve got, what six, seven months between majors? Here I’ve had months to chill out.”