This Augusta is no softy

She was waiting for him in the gallery, right after he walked off the seventh green, the same hole where he had flubbed an easy chip shot a few minutes before. Amy Mickelson threw her arms around her husband, Phil, and hugged him tightly.

It was that kind of opening day at the Masters on Thursday. A lot of players could have used a whole lot of hugs after what they went through at Augusta National Golf Club and Mickelson was one of them.

The first ball he hit as the defending champion hit a tree and dropped straight to the ground.

From then on, it was all downhill, at least for a while. Through seven holes, Mickelson was five over par, but he pulled himself together after getting that hug from his wife. After dropping to six over through 14 holes, he birdied two of the last four to wind up with a four-over 76 that could have been a lot worse.

The way Mickelson looked at it, his score also could have been a lot better. His driving was all right, he said, but the problem was that he missed too many short putts on the course’s difficult, firm greens.

“What I didn’t want to do was to shoot myself out of it the first day,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’ve done that.”

Plenty of people did Thursday when they played the first round of the Masters and the U.S. Open broke out.

Birdies are about as rare as azaleas around here, but not this time. There were more than twice as many bogeys as birdies in the round, 461-205, and that’s simply not associated with the scenery.

Those famously sloped greens at Augusta National may have reached historically concrete-like condition. The only thing left to do was to paint white lines down the middle or start landing airplanes on them.

Mickelson three-putted the par-five 13th from 15 feet and missed a birdie chance. He did make a five-footer to birdie the 15th and somehow coaxed a 30-footer into the hole for an unexpected birdie at the 16th. He even rolled in a putt from 15 feet to save par on the 17th.

“I got it going in the end ... but I missed too many short ones on the front,” he said. “You’ve got to make the short ones.”

He finished his explanation of his round, excused himself and headed straight for the putting green. Mickelson dropped three balls onto the grass and stood over them. Rick Smith, his swing coach, studied his setup.

The first three balls Mickelson hit were from three feet. He moved back to six feet and hit three more, then shifted to about eight feet from the hole and hit three more, with Smith on one knee, picking the balls out of the hole.

After about 10 minutes, Mickelson took a short break when he was joined by his wife, who gave him another hug. Mickelson took a seat on one of the log benches at the putting green and Amy sat on his lap.

Mickelson went back to work and Amy left to go back to the house on the tree-lined street that they have rented for the week, sharing it with a group of their friends.

Off the course may be a place of fun, but it’s all business for Mickelson when he’s trying to navigate his way around a very mean Augusta National. His agent, Steve Loy, walked toward the clubhouse after Mickelson’s round, shook his head and said he felt as though he had been beaten up. And that’s from someone who never swung a club.

Mickelson’s perpetually peppy disposition had taken a hit, but he tried not to let it show. This was far from the perfect start and he knew it, yet he chose to lean toward the positives, such as how he rescued a round that could have gone the other way in a hurry.

There’s plenty at stake, as usual. Tiger Woods is the one looking for his third consecutive major victory, but Mickelson is the one who has won this thing twice in the last three years and is trying to maintain his position as Woods’ main rival.

Losing is costly to reputations built on success, as Mickelson discovered with his meltdown on the 72nd hole at Winged Foot last summer. Even with his slow start and his 76 and his title defense taking on water, Mickelson knows all about costs.

Last week, he and Amy and the kids moved into a new house in Rancho Santa Fe, in ZIP Code 92091, the second most expensive ZIP Code in the U.S.

Here in ZIP Code 30904, the price of success is soaring.

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thomas.bonk@latimes.com