{"id":9026,"date":"2022-05-19T11:09:10","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T17:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/?p=9026"},"modified":"2024-07-21T16:10:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-21T22:10:29","slug":"getting-your-fill-of-phil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/personalities\/9026\/getting-your-fill-of-phil","title":{"rendered":"Getting Your Fill of Phil"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hullabaloo surrounding Tiger Woods will-he-or-won\u2019t-he? appearance at this year\u2019s Masters\u2014ending with he would\u2014managed to partially obscure the otherwise glaring absence of three-time green jacket winner, Phil Mickelson.<\/p>\n\"US<\/a>\n

There should be no need to review here the sorry details that led to Mickelson\u2019s missing the year\u2019s first major. The only question might be whether he choose to skip the tournament as part of his self-imposed abeyance from competition to become the man he wants to be, whether the Augusta National powers-that-be asked him to sit this one out, or whether the PGA Tour had slapped him with one of their never-to-be-spoken of suspensions (its version of double secret probation).<\/p>\n

[On the eve of the opening round of the Masters Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said Mickelson had not been disinvited.]<\/p>\n

\"2022-pga-championship-logo-shcc\"<\/a>It did beg another question: whether Phil would show up at Southern Hills in May to defend his 2021 PGA Championship title? Now we know the answer to that, too–he would not.<\/p>\n

It was almost impossible to imagine he wouldn’t show, but one thing you can count on with Mickelson is his unpredictability. That one of, if not the most popular players in the game today could hit such a glorious peak after that amazing victory and then so quickly plummet to such a tawdry nadir was as unseemly to witness as Will Smith at the Oscars.<\/p>\n

Propelling the brouhaha was an excerpt released from one of the three titles under consideration here, Alan Shipnuck\u2019s Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar<\/em>\u00a0(Simon & Schuster, $30), which detailed Phil\u2019s comments about the proposed Saudi league and his efforts to gain \u201cleverage\u201d over the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n

Though I read the book in galley, that whole exchange, including Mickelson accusing Shipnuck of airing off-the-record comments, and Shipnuck\u2019s denial that there were any off-the-record comments, is included toward the end of the book.<\/p>\n

\"Tiger<\/a>I also read galleys of Bob Harig\u2019s Tiger & Phil: Golf\u2019s Most Fascinating Rivalry<\/em>\u00a0(St. Martin\u2019s Press, $29.99) and Rick Reilly\u2019s So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game<\/em>\u00a0(Hachette Books, $29). Neither mention Mickelson\u2019s recent imbroglio, and a check with the publishers indicated the authors were not planning to add a postscript about it.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but think that Harig is an unfortunate victim of bad timing here. He\u2019s a fine and talented writer and the book at hand is a perfectly acceptable account of the careers of the two superstars stacked up against each other.<\/p>\n

But stacked up against Reilly and Shipnuck, Harig is a little like J.B. Holmes at the 2016 Open Championship, finishing a respectable third, but more than ten strokes behind Henrik Stenson and Mickelson.<\/p>\n

For some reason Harig opens his narrative with Hal Sutton\u2019s disastrous pairing of Woods and Mickelson at the 2004 Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills in Michigan. At the time the two stars were not particularly fans of each other, and their fruitless results didn\u2019t improve matters.<\/p>\n

From there Harig backs up to proceed chronologically through the players\u2019 careers, but the trek through countless tournaments begins to feel like a summery\u2014a bit dry, a little like looking through a scrapbook, pleasant enough to recall some of the highlights, but not an experience you couldn\u2019t live without.<\/p>\n

Harig lacks Reilly\u2019s humorous touch, and though he sprinkles ample anecdotes throughout the book, they lack the incisiveness of Shipnuck\u2019s reporting. Still, fans of either Woods or Mickelson, or both, will find enough to feast on here.<\/p>\n

\"So<\/a>Reilly\u2019s book isn\u2019t really about Mickelson or Woods at all, and yet he manages to suitably characterize the pair in a few well-chiseled phrases: \u201cI\u2019m a Phil Mickelson guy, not a Tiger Woods guy, and here\u2019s why: Phil lets us into his life. Tiger stations Dobermans at the door of his\u2026..Tiger\u2019s thoughts are on a need-to-know basis, and nobody needs to know. Phil practically gives you the passkey to his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

What So Help Me Golf<\/em> is about is 70 short takes on the ways golf weaves its way into our psyches, using Reilly\u2019s various life roles as its structure\u2014Kid, Teen, [Golf] Addict, Writer, Caddy, Fan, Father, Grandfather and a few others.<\/p>\n

Most are hilarious, like the club pro playing a practice round with Stephen Ames before a tournament. Ames never actually takes a club out of his bag during the entire round\u2014all 18 holes with an imaginary swing. At the end of which the club pro\u2019s caddie asks, \u201cWhat\u2019d you shoot?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some are poignant enough to provoke tears, like the story of Tour player Erik Compton being served by a waitress who improbably turns out to be the aunt of the man who had given him his second heart transplant.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s also the way golf allows Reilly to negotiate life around an alcoholic and abusive father, one whom he\u2019s only able to forgive years , after his father had found sobriety, during a road trip to the Masters.<\/p>\n

I would have said this is the best golf book I\u2019ve read in quite some time. But then I read Shipnuck\u2019s, another winner, and about as rip-roaring as the title promises.<\/p>\n

\"Phil\"<\/a>Most of the more recent inflammatory material about Mickelson comes in the last chapter, along with instances of Phil telling Shipnuck he was wary of the author\u2019s effort.<\/p>\n

But other than the Saudi material, Mickelson didn\u2019t really have that much to worry about. Sure, Shipnuck offers plenty of instances of Mickelson being his own worst enemy in shooting his mouth off without pondering the ramifications. (Example: The 2014 Ryder Cup press conference, when Mickelson raked captain Tom Watson over the coals.)<\/p>\n

His personal style carried over to his swashbuckling play, brilliant when it worked (Augusta National, hole 13, 2010 Masters) calamitous when it didn\u2019t (Winged Foot, hole 18, 2006 U.S. Open). But it\u2019s a Hall of Fame career by any reckoning, starting with 45 wins, putting him in a tie for eighth on the all-time PGA Tour list with Walter Hagen.<\/p>\n

Shipnuck covers Mickelson\u2019s off-course gambling as well as on, the boastful Mickelson, the trash-talking Mickelson, while blowing up some of the hoary Mickelson legends (fathering a black baby, he and Amy swinging with other couples).<\/p>\n

But he also covers the thoughtful Mickelson, the helpful to other players Mickelson, the generous Mickelson (unlike Woods, a big tipper), the philanthropic Mickelson, and the devoted family man Mickelson.<\/p>\n

A lot of this is revealed in a brilliant first chapter in which Shipnuck asks a single question, \u201cWhat\u2019s your best Phil Mickelson story?\u201d and then unfurls two and a half dozen answers from other players, athletes, writers.<\/p>\n

\"2022<\/a>Shipnuck\u2019s Mickelson contains multitudes. It\u2019s a portrait of a clearly complex character, one who, as Stewart Cink puts it in that first chapter, is all about \u201cjuice.\u201d I\u2019d call it a largely admiring portrait, with plenty of juice of its own.<\/p>\n

This piece first appeared in the April-May 2022 <\/em>Golf Oklahoma<\/a>, a special 2022 PGA Special Preview Issue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hullabaloo surrounding Tiger Woods will-he-or-won\u2019t-he? appearance at this year\u2019s Masters\u2014ending with he would\u2014managed to partially obscure the otherwise glaring… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":8118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[670,100586,9,7],"tags":[1035288,1035289,1154,1035290,8901,8902,24643,86234,174609,993562,1035287,53],"class_list":["post-9026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rummaging-around-in-the-bag","category-the-bookshelf","category-golf","category-personalities","tag-phil-the-rip-roaring-and-unauthorized-biography-of-golfs-most-colorful-superstar","tag-so-help-me-golf-why-we-love-the-game","tag-phil-mickelson","tag-tiger-amp-phil-golfs-most-fascinating-rivalry","tag-rickreilly","tag-golfoklahoma","tag-pgachampionship","tag-alan-shipnuck","tag-okalahoma","tag-southern-hills","tag-bill-harig","tag-tiger-woods"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/05\/US-Open-09-Phil.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9026"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9034,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026\/revisions\/9034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}