All Phil, All The Time

It's no secret what the most compelling story is at the U.S. Open, I mean excluding the Pinehurst newbies discovering the world class pork chop at the Pine Crest Inn.  

The Presser - Phil is famously a +7 at Whisper Rock, but at pre-tournament press conferences he's more like +15.  He just shares so much interesting information and does it in ways that connect the dots, that he's almost a national treasure.  From Alex Myers, not only does the man wants to see rain, but he's got multiple reasons for it:

With Pinehurst set to host back-to-back U.S. Opens these next two weeks, bad weather is the

He might get his wish, but they may not be able to play through it.

USGA's worst nightmare. With a record six runner-ups in Opens to his name, Phil Mickelson is thinking about it a different way. 

"The one analysis that I've made is that of those six second-place finishes, five of them it rained," Mickelson said. "So I'm pulling for rain."

So he's hoping for a seventh?  This seems the more relevant factor:

"It's not anything technical coming down the last nine holes or what have you, but I feel like if it rains this week, it will be much more difficult for guys to putt from off the green. And it will force them to chip. And if it's wet, it's so much easier to chip where the ball is skidding through the first bounce and then checking." 

"See, as the edges of the greens roll, they're also -- the grain is also going into you. So when it's dry, it's very sticky and it grabs the ball and it makes it very difficult to get the ball close when you're having to kind of drive those chips through the grain. But when it's wet, the ball skids that first bounce, gets up on top of the hill, and then checks, very easy to get by the hole the little bump chip that I like to hit."

In contrast, Bob Harig led with the change in putter grip:

Phil Mickelson is making a significant change heading into the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, going to a "claw'' putting grip -- one he has used in the past but not significantly this year.

Brian Wacker (another great name for a golfer) fills in Stockton's logic:

Tuesday morning, Mickelson spent 30 minutes with Dave Stockton and his son working on the new grip. The idea was to eliminate the “pop” in Mickelson’s stroke and get him to roll the ball into the hole. 

“I told him I don’t care what (grip) he uses,” Stockton said. “I want the thought process to be: ‘I want the ball dying in the hole.’

Yeah, I'd think so too.  As I noted in discussing Michelle Wie, there's only one reason to hit putts at dead weight, and that has to do with your comfort over 4-footers.  Phil just happens to be 149th on Tour in putting from 3-5 feet, where he misses some 16% of the time.  Good call, Dave.

But this was my favorite insight:

I don't think that the experience of playing in the U.S. Open here in the past years is very

helpful, other than knowing how to play the golf course, where to miss it and what places you need to be careful of, because those are pretty similar around the greens. The notes I took from 2005 were identical. 

Places you want to play from, places you don't want to play from. I will say one thing, I can't -- because I've been raving about how great this place is, I will say the one knock that I have, when they made No.5 a par-5, I thought it was the greatest decision because that green is the most difficult green out here and I thought it sure would be exciting to see us hitting long iron shots in par-5 trying to make birdies and eagles. 

But when the tee boxes were moved so far back to where it's not reachable, now the shot we're hitting into that green is a 50-yard pitch shot. That's just not exciting, challenging, and won't have the same type of drama that it would have if those back tees were removed and the green was reachable in two. 

Now there's some guys like Bubba and Dustin and those guys that can reach it, but for the most part, it's two good shots to about 40, 50 yards short and then you wedge on. But that green is exciting when you're hitting a 4- or 5-iron into it. But unless the tees are moved forward, we won't see that.

Amy's Story - We're all quite familiar with (and by Sunday will want never to hear of) the events of 1999, when Phil was wearing a beeper in case Amy went into labor with their first child.  But Helen Ross tells Amy's side of the story at the Tour's website, and there's some amazing detail, including this from the denouement:

Across the country, Amy was crying. Actually, she had been crying since the 15th hole, the

Phil with his girls in 2000.

combination of her pregnancy and her husband being in contention down the stretch leaving her unable to contain her emotions. 

"It was very, very emotional watching it," Amy recalled. "Payne makes this big putt at the end and it was kind of surreal. It never occurred to me that Phil wasn't going to win. So that was hard. 

"But as we all know, Payne was the epitome of class at that moment. He walked over and said all those beautiful things to Phil about being a father at the same moment he was winning a major championship. It was incredible."

Do read the entire piece, as it's quite the thing for a young couple to experience.

Bones, Unappreciated? - This is a mostly worthwhile Gene Wojciechowski post on Phil's famous luggage carrier, Jim "Bones" Mackay.  Perhaps it's just the header, but Gene seems to imply, though without actually saying it, that Bones deserves more credit, which is certainly contrary to my sense.  

In any event, Gene's version of their meeting on a Phoenix driving range is exactly how I'd script it, though of course the scene should end with them in each others' arms.  See if this tease doesn't grab you:

Mackay watched -- and he instantly knew. He knew he was watching a golf savant. The ball

sounded so stunningly different coming off his clubface. Mickelson hit the ball so hard. His swing had so much speed, so many gears.

Unfortunately there's a mandatory deduction for excessive use of metaphors, and this sentence should earn him a place in the Writer's Hall of Shame:

They have been through good times as thick as the second cut of U.S. Open rough. And hard times as thin as a scorecard.

I know, but he'll be a better man for the tough love.  And this one was equally bad, but it's salvaged by the inherent humor:

Only one major eludes Mickelson: the U.S. Open. The Open treats Mickelson like Labradors treat fire hydrants.

The common thread in these pieces is that you'll like the protagonists even more after reading.

The Gambler - Shack points us to this James B. Stewart piece at the New York Times on the insider trading case, sort of a psychological profile of the inside trader as an action junkie.  The piece doesn't seem to be based on any new information, but if you're constantly asking yourself why he would take the chance since he doesn't need the money, this might be the article for you.