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Tuesday April 20, 2004 Volume VI Number 16

came out of my chair.  Couldn’t help it. 

I jumped up, both hands in the air, whistling and jumping around the room, whooping just like the thousands of golf enthusiasts surrounding the green at Augusta who saw it live - and the millions like me watching on television. Mickelson dropped the putt of his career, an eighteen footer, barely swirling it into the cup, and for one sweet moment in time, well, justice prevailed.

The Masters Tournament, one of the four “Majors” on the PGA tour, challenges the best golfers in the world.  To be invited at all, you must be well established as a top tier competitor.  To win it, you’ve got four rounds to stay ahead of the best of the best.  The reward is symbol as much as it is money.  To don the green jacket, ah, there’s the best of it.  It’s a life-time membership into one of golf’s most exclusive clubs.

In the six years between 1958 and 1963, Arnold Palmer won an astonishing four times.  In the twenty three years between 1963 and 1986, Jack Nicklaus took home the Green Jacket six times, a record that may never be broken.

Phil Mickelson lives down the road from our place in upscale Rancho Santa Fe.  So for us, he’s something of a home-town hero.  Until last Sunday, he wore the unwelcome label “The-Best-Golfer-In-The-World-Never-to-Win-a-Major” with a certain distinction, and some measure of discomfiture.  He’s one of the world’s top money winners.  He is a consistent top-finisher.  For the thirteen years he’s been on the tour, he’s established himself as a front-runner, always in the hunt.  Many felt he was the one golfer with the talent to teach Tiger Woods a little humility.  But time and again, just as he’s about to win, he blows a putt.  Or he drives into the woods.  Or he takes two, or three, frustrating shots to get out of the sand bunker.  His standing on the Leader Board drops.  He bogeys when a birdie would put him in the winner’s spot.  This extraordinary golfer got tagged as Mr. Choke.  He’d scream up to the final holes, in the zone, and then falter.

Some called it failure.  Real golfers know better.  Every week on the tour, only one man out of a hundred and twenty-five golfers goes home with the title.  In four grueling rounds, only one maintains the consistency and the over-all performance to finish with the fewest number of strokes.  That’s seventy-two holes, seventy-two opportunities to get lost in the Netherlands, stay out of the deep stuff - and emerge the winner.  To be a consistent top level contender puts you in the rarified air few golfers will ever know, high in the stratosphere of the legends of golf. 

Most of us mortals will never now the feeling.

Phil Mickelson is a lefty.  Go ahead, count ‘em.  How many lefties do you see out there on a Sunday afternoon?  Not many.  His moves look backward - like you are watching a mirror image.  He’s got no real models.  When he watches the greats, and mimics their moves, he must turn it around to the opposite side.  His whole world-view is skewed.  Try hitting the ball with one of his clubs.

Forty-two times Phil has competed in the tour’s majors.  Every time, he prepared himself to win.  In seventeen of the competitions, he finished in the top ten.  But never the winner.

Phil’s reputation as a hot head and showman dogged him from early on.  He has an extraordinary long game, and loved to take risks just to prove it.  He would take big chances, going for the pin when he should lay up.  He aims for the green out of the woods rather than bump it back on the fairway.  He said he’d rather enjoy the exhilaration of the fearsome risk, take the chance of a great shot over a predictable one.  This is just the kind of heady arrogance, some said, that prevented him from winning that major event.  But now, just a few days short of his thirty-fourth birthday, he’s a seasoned pro.  Observers have noticed.  He’s changed his game.  You don’t see the brash, swaggering Phil pushing the envelope just to prove a point.  He’s relaxed.  Enjoying the journey.  Shrugging off the goofs.  Focused on the next stroke.  One at a time.  He’d prefer winning the match to bragging about a single spectacular shot.  At long last, he sought the help of some of the top rated coaches in the business.  He listened.  He resists the temptation to indulge in the astonishing and instead embrace the discipline of conservative play. 

Ron Sirak of Golf World Magazine put it this way -

Time and again at Augusta National Golf Club, as Mickelson reached for a 3-wood instead of driver off the tee, time and again as he played a controlled fade rather than a power hook, time and again as he abandoned his look-at-what-I-can-do flop shot for the safer play of the putter from near the green, Mickelson displayed the course management skills that translate to major titles. This is exactly the way Phil once told us he would never play because it was just a lot more fun to gamble.

It all came together in Augusta last week.

He was paired with the number two man on the Leader Board for Sunday’s round.  When he finished the first nine holes, he looked back on a disappointing start.  While he birdied the second, he went on to bogey three of the next four.  His position dropped on the Leader Board.  Then something happened on the turn.  Rather than slip into a brooding, self-condemning mood of gloom and self-abasement, he threw back his head and laughed.  He remembered how good he really is.  He decided to forget the past, look ahead, and take it one stroke at a time.  And focus.

The Leader Board told him that his primary competition came from the great Ernie Els.  But he new his real competition – Phil Mickelson.  He let it go.  And as he walked into the back nine, he entered the zone known only to a handful of greats.  No more bogeys.  An astonishing five birdies.  His partner on Sunday’s round, Chris DiMarco, whose game fell apart in the shadow of the mighty Mickelson, hit his second shot into the bunker to the left of the green at eighteen.

By this time, word was out.  Telephones rang around the world, “Tune in to the Masters!  Looks like Mickelson’s got a shot… you may have a chance to see golf history!”  And people did.  The television ratings spiked, Mickelson all the buzz.  Phil’s tee shot on his final hole, picture perfect.  Right in the center of the fairway.  After Chris DiMarco found the sand, Phil address his ball center stage as I moved to the edge of my seat.

That’s when it hit.  “IF he can birdie this hole, he takes the championship…” I announced to the Easter gathering, as though no one else had figured it out.  The conversations stopped.  Everyone gathered around the screen.  Phil took his easy back swing, an eight iron, aiming at the pin on the upside of the large green at the center of the Masters crowd.  The ball took flight.  Plop!  The ball hit the green – right at the pin, and then rolled safely passed, about eighteen feet.

The crowd exploded.  “Mr. Choke” may no longer be Mr. Choke, we thought.  “Oh my gosh,” somebody said, “if he makes this putt, he’ll win the Masters!”  The camera went to Ernie Els, keeping warm on the practice putting green, hoping. 

Then Phil made the walk most every golfer dreams of.  It’s the approach to the eighteenth green on the final round as the occupant of the top spot on the Leader Board.  The crowd understands the significance of this extraordinary achievement, and greets you with wild, enthusiastic applause, whistles, cheering – calling you by name and welcoming you to golf’s winner’s circle, the place where legends are born.

Today, on the rich green grass of Augusta, it was Phil Mickelson, smiling, acknowledging the crowd’s wholehearted appreciation.  Work remained.  It wasn’t over.  Not yet.

Chris DiMarco stepped into the deep bunker.  A hush fell over the crowd.  He popped his ball up and out in a spray of sand and the ball touched down near the pin and rolled towards Phil’s ball, stopping just short of it.  Every golfer knew immediately.  DiMarco just handed Phil an enormous gift.  DiMarco would putt first, according to the rules of golf etiquette.  With a good putt, this allows Phil the chance to watch the line, see and remember the twists and turns, the tiny, otherwise imperceptible hills and valleys along the pathway of a million dollar putt.  The biggest in Phil’s career.

Chris DiMarco surveyed the green and took his stroke.  The ball rolled toward the cup.  Perfect distance.  And just like most every other golfer earlier that same day, putting from this area of the green, he missed the mark by mere inches.  At the end, a slight turn left.  The ball stopped just below the hole.  The crowd groaned.

Phil captured every nuance of the full run in his mind’s eye. 

The tension mounted in our little living room.  And if there, how much more so in the Georgia crowd, where the privileged crowd of witnesses held their breath, all aware of the enormous consequence of this single stroke.

Phil circled the green, looking at the line.  Laser focus.  A professional at work.  An slight, easy grin.  All his life, all the long hours, all the hopes and dreams and long practice, and study and planning and strategizing, all the predictions of victory, all those times walking away in disappointment with the promise of next time, all of it, came down to this moment.  This one stroke.  Miss the putt, and the Masters would be extended to another three holes, and Ernie Els given the chance to take away the win.  Two putt, and go home with the label “Mr. Choke” firmly established in the Golf-World’s-Hall-of-Also-Rans.  But this time, something about Phil’s demeanor.  You could feel it.  He would not be denied.

Phil stood tall on the green, slightly bent left-handed over the ball, taking a practice stroke and the crowd went silent.  The announcer whispered.  Someone in our living room ordered silence in the house.  Phil hit the ball.  A hollow click and the ball accelerated down the intended path toward the hole, camera rolling, zooming.  You could almost hear the ball crunching along the scissor clipped velvet grass, bouncing slightly along the route, and up and over, down and around then at the end, slowing down, a jump to the left, oh NO… then catching the edge of the cup, swirling around the backside… and IN!

That’s when I left my seat.

You could hear us screaming up and down the block.  And maybe you could hear the fans from Augusta, too.

Phil went skyward.  Two hands raised upright to the sky.  A release of laughter.  A camera caught him airborne, frozen forever in time as the long almost-there streak came to an abrupt and final end.

Ernie Els picked up his practice ball and turned home, knowing something of the old Mickelson let-down.

But for Phil, that’s over now.

He reached into the cup, pulled out the ball, kissed it with a smile and tossed it into a crowd of cheering admirers and walked into the embrace of his teary wife and three children.  “Daddy won!” he told his adorable curly blonde four-year-old dressed in ruffles and bows.  She smiled back and hugged him and giggled while the camera watched.

In the confines of the small Green Shack of Augusta, Phil Mickelson presented his winning score-card to the officials, which they accepted and certified. 

Phil’s smile - permanent.

How sweet it is.

* * * * * * *

It’s Tuesday morning.  You are a leader.

You know the feeling of almost-there.  You know what it’s like to be misunderstood, under-rated.  You believed their predictions back then.  You’ve got special gifts.  But you’ve had some serious reality checks.  You’ve taken the risky route, and you’ve been burned.  You tried the short-cut; and it didn’t work.

But you haven’t given up.

Good thing.

Ask Phil.  What if he hadn’t come back, and tried again?  What if, after the bogeys on the front nine, he had given in to that little voice that said, “There you have it, Phil.  You’re hopeless.  Here we go again.  Disappointment awaits.  You’ll never make it.”

He didn’t listen.  This time, he knew better.

As a leader, you know your time will come.  And between now and then, there really is joy in the journey.

And in its time, the reward will come.

Posted in Spring Green, Wisconsin

© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004

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