Mickelson back to driving force

Tour NewsWhen Phil Mickelson departed The K Club last September with that sinking feeling only players on the losing team in a Ryder Cup experience, it was to return home to his family, to put away his clubs competitively for the winter, and, basically, to try to work out how to cure the scars that had blighted him since his fall-out in the US Open at Winged Foot the previous June. Quite simply, at that moment in time, he was fed up with the game.

Until the AT&T Pebble Beach on Sunday which gave him his 30th career win on the US PGA Tour, it had seemed his winter reflections hadn't solved anything. In his previous three outings on tour this year, Mickelson had finished 51st, 45th and missed the cut in last week's Phoenix Open.

However, at Pebble Beach, Mickelson rediscovered himself, finishing with a 66 (including losing a ball early in his round) for a 20-under-par total of 268, to leave him five shots clear of runner-up Kevin Sutherland.

For a player who hot-tailed it out of The K Club and left his clubs gathering dust over the winter, Mickelson has returned to tour with a vengeance. His decision to play this week's Nissan Open at The Riviera club in Los Angeles means he will be on the road for a fifth straight week, and he will also play next week's Accenture Matchplay.

And, having slipped from third in the official world rankings at the start of the year down to sixth last week, Mickelson's success at Pebble Beach moved him back up to fourth in the rankings. It also enabled him to become just the third player to exceed $40 million in career earnings on the US Tour (behind Tiger Woods, who has won over $60 million, and Vijay Singh, who has accumulated more than $50 million).

Woods has decided not to play the Nissan Open, preferring to wait until next week's Accenture Matchplay in Tucson before attempting to continue his winning streak on the US Tour. But Padraig Harrington, who finished tied-30th in Pebble Beach, and Paul McGinley, who was tied-50th, are both playing Riviera.

For Harrington, who has dropped one place to 10th in the world rankings, it will be the second tournament in a stretch of four that will also take in the Accenture and the following week's Honda Classic, an event he won in 2005.

McGinley went into Pebble Beach requiring at least a top-five finish if he was to break into the confined 64-man field for the Accenture and, so, this week's tournament in Los Angeles will complete his short road trip in the States. He is due to take a two-week break after LA, before resuming tournament play in China. The Dubliner has dropped to 84th in the world rankings, down from a start-of-year position of 71st and a sharp contrast to a year ago when he was in the top 25.

Mickelson's win was good for golf, re-establishing him as one of the few players capable of taking on Woods in any given week. For the latter part of last season, his final hole travails in the US Open at Winged Foot hung over him. He resolved to become a better driver of the ball, and that was evidenced in his final round at Pebble Beach on Sunday where he missed just one fairway and finished up as the top-ranked player in birdies, hitting greens in regulation and putts per greens in regulation. In short, his all-round game was back.

His decision not to take a break from tournament play this week came as something of a surprise, given his previous record at Riviera. He hasn't played there since 2001 and has never finished better than 15th. He has missed the cut in four of his eight starts.

Yet Mickelson believes it is the ideal course to test his new-found confidence with the driver. As he explained, "I have never driven it this well. It's very easy for me to hit fairways. That's why I'm excited about playing Riviera, I'm excited about playing tight courses. I wanted to play a little bit more competitive golf with the way I'm playing before I start my run up for Augusta."

Meanwhile, Darren Clarke, Europe's only winner of the Accenture World Matchplay title, is likely to face Ryder Cup team-mate Paul Casey, the reigning HSBC World Match Play champion, in the first round of next week's event in Tucson.

Although the seedings based on the world rankings would put Clarke in against Sergio Garcia the expected withdrawal of American Arron Oberholser with a bad back means Clarke would move up a spot and therefore clash with Casey.

Oberholser pulling out would also mean Lee Westwood switching from a duel with Harrington to one with defending champion Geoff Ogilvy. Harrington would take on American Ryder Cup player Zach Johnson instead.