Making A Statement

Phil Mickelson scores a 'playoff' win over Tiger Woods, then hints at his dissatisfaction with the FedEx Cup format

The majority of a boisterous Labor Day crowd at TPC Boston followed the Mickelson-Woods duel.

Darren Carroll

By John Hawkins

Photo: Darren Carroll

September 7, 2007

The rivalry comes and goes, which, come to think of it, should prevent us from calling it a rivalry at all. The head-to-head matchups are few and far between, the bark as docile as the hype is colossal, and if you're looking for a bite, the long-term results remain decidedly one-sided. When the superstars align and there's a trophy on the line, however, duels that may lack historic relevance are best savored in the proper context.

Tiger Woods, the best golfer of this and perhaps any era, was outplayed by his most persistent semi-nemesis last Monday in the second chapter of the inaugural FedEx Cup playoffs. Phil Mickelson, a man for whom the beaten path has become a four-lane highway at times, a player who in recent years has proven both brilliant and resilient, shook off the potentially disastrous effects of an "old-Phil" double bogey at TPC Boston's par-4 12th and navigated the last six holes in two under, strokes that would represent the final margin between his 16-under 268 and Woods' 14-under 270 at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Norton, Mass.

Beyond the four-plus hours of stellar competitive theater in an atmosphere that produced the voltage of an NFL playoff game, whatever nagging concerns looming over the PGA Tour's first postseason were nullified, at least for the time being, by the two guys this format can't flourish without. Brett Wetterich, who led the event after three rounds, and Arron Oberholser, the other half of Monday's final pairing, remained in the hunt to the end and tied Woods for second place. One easily could make a case that it was Oberholser, not Tiger, who applied the most pressure on Mickelson down the stretch.

Of course, the size of the trucks in the rear-view mirror can be judged only by the man in the driver's seat. "He was making a charge," Philly Mick said of Woods. "To be able to stand up on 16 after he knocked it close and follow it with a birdie of my own, to knock it inside him and finish with a couple of birdies, that feels terrific. The next step is to go head-to-head in a major."

It wasn't exactly a hand-to-the-heart endorsement of the FedEx Cup, but before we examine Lefty's cryptic renouncement of tour commissioner Tim Finchem in his post-victory interview with NBC's Jimmy Roberts, let us first recap all the reasons to believe Mickelson might finally sustain his on-again, off-again pursuit of Woods as the game's best player. It wasn't just the double at the 12th, where Mickelson fatted his 6-iron approach into a rockbed and eventually missed a five-footer for bogey, that tested his resolve. Tiger hadn't made a putt longer than six feet until the 14th. Trailing Mickelson by three, he dunked a 40-footer. Lefty left his own birdie try four feet short and had to grind over the par-save, which he made.

After a cruel lip-out for birdie at the 15th, Woods staked an 8-iron at the par-3 16th, parking it 10 feet right of the flag. Mickelson responded with a soaring bullet that never left the pin. After one crisp hop, he was left with a six-footer that everyone knew absolutely had to go in.

It did. As was the case here in 2004, when Vijay Singh defeated Woods in similar fashion to unseat Tiger briefly atop the World Ranking, Sir Eldrick was out-putted and, thus, out-performed. Still, he shot 67 on a day when he was missing 15-footers by five or six inches on both sides of the hole and his speed was alarmingly inconsistent. Changing diapers does little to sharpen a man's prowess on the greens.

"Four or five three-putts [on the week] and I'm still right there, which means I'm hitting the ball well," Woods reasoned. "Phil got off to a great start, and we all had to go get him. I didn't make enough putts to push him."