Mickelson deserves a big hand after a round like this

Midway through the most grass-stained six hours of my life, I am kneeling in ankle-high weeds, wiping the seedlings from my shirt, brushing the dirt off my pants, taking a break ...

Oh no. Here he comes again.

“Fore!” somebody shouts, and I knew they really didn’t mean “Fore,” they meant, “Phil!” because it had been happening all day.

Phil Mickelson was, once again, sailing his tee shot directly into the broom-thick rough in the first round of the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club.

This time, the ball was headed straight for me.

I jumped up and stumbled backward, thrashing through the thicket as if running from an elephant. With a thud, the ball landed just behind me, disappearing into grass so deep, officials promptly marked it with an orange flag.

I could barely walk in this stuff, and a guy with an injured wrist has to hit golf balls out of it?

Mickelson trudged into the muck and repeated a ritual he followed after nine errant tee shots and seven other wild shots.

He shrugged, he adjusted his left wrist brace, he chipped the ball into the fairway, he winced in pain, he walked ahead.

After his first hole, he could have quit. After 10 holes, maybe he should have quit.

He couldn’t keep both hands on the club on certain shots, he was unable to use his longest club on most shots, he was constantly flexing and feeling his strained left wrist, and he was already four over par.

A year after his Winged Foot meltdown, it was time for his Wringed Wrist meltdown.

Only, it wasn’t.

For once, Phil didn’t flop. For once, Phil took no shortcuts and offered no excuses.

For once, Phil was the Tiger.

He survived the rough that nearly swallowed me. He survived bunkers so deep you could see only the top of his head.

Playing in one of Thursday’s final groups, with only a couple of media members still watching and many fans baked and yawning, he shot par on each of his final eight holes, finishing just ahead of dusk and far beyond doubt.

Playing in a tournament he would have missed if it wasn’t a major, playing with a wrist so painful he had not played 18 holes in two weeks, Mickelson bit his lip long enough to finish at four-over-par 74.

The best round of the day, even though he’s tied for 57th place.

The strongest round of the day, even though Tiger Woods’ driving average was 34 yards longer than his.

The most efficient round of the day, even though he didn’t make a single birdie.

He wasn’t great. But he wasn’t backing down either and, for Mickelson, that’s just as important.

On an Oakmont course whose owners chopped down 5,000 trees to turn it into a links-style track, Mickelson was the oak.

“It’s aggravating,” Mickelson said of the wrist. “It’s annoying.”

Here’s guessing it was worse than that.

When he finished his first nine holes, he briefly met with his physical therapist, Jim Weathers.

“I asked him how he was doing,” Weathers recalled. “He said, ‘Stay close.’ ”

During the remainder of the afternoon, Weathers said he received three calls from other clients here.

“I told them I would meet them later,” Weathers said. “I could not leave Phil.”

And when Mickelson finished his interviews and hopped into his courtesy SUV for the drive to his rental home?

Weathers hopped in the front seat with him.

“People don’t understand,” Weathers said. “What Phil has, it’s like an offensive lineman with a bad wrist on a hand that has to fight back pass rushers.”

For Mickelson, who injured the wrist while practicing from the rough at Oakmont a little more than two weeks ago, the concern is not hefty linemen but thick brush and sand.

When he has to propel his 120-mph swing against such inanimate objects, he needs every inch of his wrist for strength.

That wrist was in such pain, as recently as last Friday he could not even hit a golf ball.

So why risk re-injuring and embarrassing himself in what is annually the worst major tournament for a player who can’t physically bear to hit from the rough?

Mickelson showed up because he felt an obligation to the game, to the rivalry with Woods, and to a new swing that had led him to a first and two thirds in his previous three completed tournaments.

The folks here adored him for it, thousands of Steelers fans from nearby Pittsburgh turning soft, with someone shouting, “I love you Phil!” on nearly every hole.

Mickelson responded by waving the sore left hand to everyone and once even using it to slap five with a fan.

His most impassioned answer afterward was not about playing, but quitting.

“No, no, no, no,” he said when asked about thoughts of withdrawing. “This is aggravating, but it’s not a shooting pain like it was two weeks ago. It’s an annoyance or like a bruise, like getting pushed in a black and blue spot.”

Unlike at Winged Foot last year -- when he called himself an “idiot” after blowing a victory with risky bad shots late -- he said he survived on his wits.

“I think I’m not in a position where I have to make birdies,” he said, noting the expected high scores here. “I will just keep making pars and four pars is like a birdie.”

That’s how those final eight holes happened. He simply started hitting the ball straighter. Not long, but straight, setting him up for fairway shots that didn’t hurt nearly so bad.

In the end, the wrist that he was clutching was also the wrist that he was pumping. Woods, at full strength and in full buff tight-golf-shirt mode, finished only three strokes better.

Just before disappearing into an evening of ice baths and massages, Mickelson was later asked if he was proud of his 74.

“I wouldn’t say proud,” he said.

He should have been.

--

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.