It is not often that a tournament’s marketing slogan could serve as the mantra for a particular player’s week, if not his entire career.
The organisers of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship this week picked "expect the unexpected" as the promotional hook, and with the mercurial Phil Mickelson in the field, it ended up being positively providential.
It dually served as the postscript on Sunday.
Cruising toward his 50th worldwide victory, Mickelson derailed in the desert with one of the quintessentially defining back nines of his Hall of Fame career, which, like the round-wrecking scenario he faced on the 13th hole, almost defied description.
In other words, same old same old for Lefty, the only player in golf whose visor should come with a chin strap.
“We’re all along for the ride,” said Mickelson, laughing. “We’re up, we’re down. We see where it goes.”
Where it stops, nobody knows.
When Mickelson ad-libs, oxygen becomes scarce.
Leading the tournament at 13 under as he played the 13th hole, Mickelson sliced his 3-wood tee shot into the desert, where the ball came to rest in a forest of spindly bushes.
After he considered both taking an unplayable-lie penalty drop or returning to the tee and absorbing a two-shot penalty for stroke and distance, Mickelson instead attempted to play sideways.
That is the direction the tournament headed, too.
He flipped over a 4-iron, toe of the club pointed down, crouched at the knees and tried to scrape the ball into a clear patch of desert with an abbreviated, right-handed swing.
He said he could barely see the ball on the ground through the branches of the bush, and barely caught a piece of it.
What happened next is what makes the five-time major winner an eye magnet in spikes, the game’s most entertaining player.
It was another Mickelson moment, when half the audience was screaming “go for it”, and the other half put their head under a pillow and waited for the scary part to end.
The shot moved only a few inches, caromed off a branch, hit the shaft of his club and came to rest about five feet away
It was a rare double-hit shot, and after he took a penalty drop from that position, a triple-bogey seven was all he could salvage.
“It never crossed my mind that I could double-hit it,” he said. “I was just trying to dribble it out of the bush.”
He double-dribbled, instead.
Incredibly, though the disaster resulted in a four-stroke shift that gave Pablo Larrazabal the lead, Mickelson birdied three of the last five holes, and the Spaniard had to birdie the 18th to win by a shot over Lefty and Rory McIlroy.
“He bounced back really, really well,” playing partner Craig Lee said.
Ever malleable, that Mickelson.
Of course, he is well-practised.
Though one bad hole torched a week of good work, Mickelson reeled off a series of one-liners at his own expense afterward. More than ever, Mickelson, who shot 69, is comfortable with his white-knuckle persona. It is a wonder he has not landed an antacid endorsement deal by now. Stomach linings ache whenever he walks onto Bermuda grass.
A day earlier, after a low-percentage shot resulted in a birdie at the 18th, he shrugged and said, “It’s just what I do.”
The particulars of this derailment will long be remembered because of the sheer oddity of the scenario. Asked the last time he double-hit a shot, Mickelson thought for a few moments, then laughed.
“I don’t remember, but I am sure I have done it, because I have done a lot of crazy [stuff],” he said, grinning.
Mickelson sat alongside McIlroy at the trophy presentation, laughing and cracking jokes. He has developed a thick skin with regard to tournaments that have slipped through his fingers.
Indeed, the crazy manner in which Mickelson lost it likely will be remembered more vividly than how Larrazabal hung on to win.
When it was noted that his entertainment value remains second to none, Mickelson took it as the compliment it was intended to be.
“I enjoy playing golf,” he said. “I enjoy challenging myself to hit shots, and sometimes I pull them off, and sometimes I don’t.
“This week, I had a little bit of both.”
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