There's a little Phil Mickelson in all of us. It's the hare-brained, headstrong, heedless part that never learns to play for par.
EZRA SHAW / Getty Images
Phil Mickelson's foul-up of the final hole at the U.S. Open showed he's human - an endearing quality.
|
It's the impetuous reflex that causes a kid to buy his first car based on flash rather than fuel economy. It's the stupid streak that accounts for deepening credit card debt and shallow savings.
It's the undenied urge to gratify a dangerous desire when your head is telling you it's time to hedge your bets.
We've all experienced something similar to the brain cramp Mickelson manifested on the final hole of the U.S. Open on Sunday afternoon at Winged Foot Golf Club. We've all invited disaster by doing something inexplicably dumb when prudence presented a wiser path.
Human history is a tale of boneheaded moves by brilliant men: Napoleon's invasion of Russia; Nixon's tapes of his own transgressions; Jerry Van Dyke passing up the lead on “Gilligan's Island” in favor of a more vapid vehicle, “My Mother The Car.”
Most of us, at one time or 100, have had occasion to invoke Mickelson's Sunday summary: “I am such an idiot.” For many of us, it amounts to a daily mantra. The social imperative to “go for the gusto” – a phrase that fell out of favor with the demise of the Joseph Schlitz Company – is consistent with our audacious national character and our sometimes suspect club selection.
We would rather go down in flames than to tread timidly, to dare greatly rather than play the dull percentage. This was the quality that made Kevin Costner's Roy McAvoy so appealing in “Tin Cup,” a fictional film that now looks like a Mickelson documentary.
“Greatness,” McAvoy tells us, “courts failure.”
That's Phil Mickelson, to a tee.
It was bad enough that Mickelson hit a driver he couldn't control on No. 18. But in attempting a heroic cut around a clump of uncooperative trees, he compounded his original mistake and essentially eliminated himself from winning a third straight major championship.
Lefty twice chose valor over discretion, both times listing too far to his left. He ultimately carded a double-bogey six when par would have won the tournament outright and a bogey would have put him in a playoff with champion-by-attrition Geoff Ogilvy.
This was the kind of course management that characterized Mickelson's game before his 2004 breakthrough at the Masters, a hellbent style that both fascinated and frustrated his fans. “Phil The Thrill” would leave it to the other guys to lay up, or punch out from the rough into the fairway. He would go for the green and accept the consequences.
Mickelson started winning major championships when he tempered his trademark aggression with the occasional tactical retreat. He learned to pick his spots more selectively, to embrace the routine par, to rely more heavily on his talent and less on his nerve, to beat Tiger Woods at his own inexorable game.
Sunday's relapse showed that bad habits die hard, however, and revived Mickelson's reputation for counterproductive swashbuckling. That he didn't carry a 3-wood in his bag at Winged Foot surely shaped his decision to hit driver off the tee on No. 18, but Mickelson did nothing to mitigate the broadcast barbs of NBC's Johnny Miller, whose expert commentary eerily foreshadowed Mickelson's meltdown.
“You don't have to run down the last stretch on a white stallion,” Miller said. “You can limp in there and say, 'Thanks for the trophy.' ”
Experience tells you to play it safe when you're ahead, and to cut your losses quickly when circumstances change, but there are a lot of us rockheads who don't listen to reason. (Moreover, those of us who have ridden Lucent Technologies from $83 a share to $2.38 should recognize that our advice on risk tolerance could be ruinous.)
The Phil Mickelson in each of us says to press your luck, to damn the torpedoes, to follow your heart when your head says, “Back up, big fella.” That we sometimes exercise poor judgment is not proof of our hubris, but our humanity – our faith, our trust, our hope.
Those who have ever invested in a lottery ticket or bought a used car or accepted a blind date have a touch of Phil Mickelson in their makeup. Perhaps this explains Mickelson's popularity.
“A man's reach should exceed his grasp,” wrote the poet, Robert Browning, “or what's a heaven for?”
Amen to that. Besides, what is heaven but a Mulligan?
Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com
