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Phil Mickelson: Tough week in Memphis won’t hang over U.S. Open

By Brandon Raper

MEMPHIS, TN - JUNE 09: Phil Mickelson plays his shot from the 12th tee during the third round of the FedEx St. Jude Classic at TPC Southwind on June 9, 2018 in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images)
MEMPHIS, TN - JUNE 09: Phil Mickelson plays his shot from the 12th tee during the third round of the FedEx St. Jude Classic at TPC Southwind on June 9, 2018 in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images) /
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Phil Mickelson tumbled down the leaderboard Saturday at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. Will he be able to bounce back with the U.S. Open just four days away?

Phil Mickelson has kept one date circled on his calendar for the last year: Thursday, June 14th, 2018. That, of course, is the first day of competition at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. It’s also the 27th chance he’ll get to finally break through in the only major that has eluded him after all these years.

While Mickelson has enjoyed a lot of success so far in 2018, turning back the clock and winning for the first time since 2013 at the WGC-Mexico Championship, he’s stumbling a bit headed to New York. The FedEx St. Jude Classic at TPC Southwind was supposed to be a final tune-up, but can he find his game on a short week of prep?

The Hall of Famer spent most of the day on Saturday finding the worst lies at TPC Southwind, and doing his best to work out of them. Opening with six straight pars, Mickelson made a pair of bogeys late to make the turn at +2 for the day.

On the par-4 9th, he left his second shot short of the green, with the ball landing precariously near the water hazard. Not missing a beat, he popped the ball up and 14 feet past the hole. What looked like an average comeback par putt slid low, and he wound up settling for bogey. That wound up being the story of his entire day – close, but not quite right.

When Mickelson dunked his tee shot in the water on 11, it led to a double-bogey 5, and suddenly what looked to be a promising week was suddenly a struggle to stay under par. He did finally post a red number with a birdie on 12, but gave it right back with a bogey on 13. Basically, he kept finding trouble, but couldn’t save himself with the putter.

Phil Mickelson must center himself ahead of the U.S. Open

The one bit of good news to come out of Phil’s horrible day on Saturday is that it almost has to be a statistical outlier; it can basically only get better on Sunday. For the second straight day, he lost strokes on the field from tee-to-green. However, it was his putting that was the real aberration. He went from gaining more than two strokes putting on Thursday, to dropping almost two and a half on Saturday.

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Dropping from the top 15 to a tie for 49th place through 54 holes, Lefty’s final round on Sunday could be a mixed bag. Sitting 14 shots back of leaders Dustin Johnson and Andrew Putnam, there’s precisely no pressure on him anymore.

Mickelson will be able to play loose and free, with the only mission to regain some confidence ahead of the trek to Shinnecock. However, even for Phil, who’s been through literally everything a player can see in a career, this week must shake his confidence to some degree.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, though, it’s that Phil has plenty of capacity to bounce back, especially when the pressure is the highest. Look back to 2009, for instance.

That year, Phil went 68-70-68-75 at TPC Southwind, finishing T-59 in his lead-in to the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. We all remember how close Phil came that year, don’t we?

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At the end of the day, what happens in Memphis shouldn’t hang over Phil any longer than the time it takes him to get back to New York. Once he steps onto the tee box at Shinnecock, this will be firmly in the rear-view mirror. And if he can finally get that particular monkey off his back, it’ll all be worth it.

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