One Magical Sunday
Page 10
Garcia
-3
17
DiMarco
-3
9
Casey
-3
10
Singh
-2
14
Choi
-1
10
10
Camellia
Par 4
495 yards
Slight Dogleg Left
Walking over to the 10th tee, I turn to Chris DiMarco. He did not have a good front nine, either. But he’s still only two shots off the lead.
“You know, Chris,” I say, “for the last thirteen years, the winner of the Masters has come from the final pairing. Let’s make sure it does for a fourteenth time.”
“I agree,” replies Chris.
This first hole on the back nine is traditionally the most difficult hole on the course. It’s a very long par 4 with a treacherous green that slopes right to left. As I step up to the tee, I’m thinking that I definitely do not want to hook this drive. If I do, my ball will go through the fairway and off into the trees. So I want to make certain that I cut it right to left. Unfortunately, I over cut it by hanging on to the club during my swing—something I’ve done a number of times in the past. The ball goes way left. It clips some trees and lands in the edge of the woods. This is the first real mistake I’ve made today. Well, let’s head up there and see what we’ve got.
As I’m walking, I’m thinking that I clearly had a bad front nine. Now I’ve got to find a way to put it behind me so that I have a chance to win the Masters. But I’ve overcome adversity in the past and I can do it again.
The year 2003 was a particularly bad year for me and I had to find a way to put it behind me. For the first time since 1999, I didn’t win a single tournament. In twenty-three starts, my highest finish was third at the Masters. I didn’t finish in the top thirty on the money list. I went 0-5 in the President’s Cup matches and let down my teammates. I had a terrible year driving off the tee—hitting very few fairways and seeming always to be in the rough. I was pathetic from 130 yards in—and before 2003, I was one of the best from that distance. I experimented with some mechanical things in my golf swing that didn’t pan out. All in all, it was just a difficult year.
After the majors had been played, I really needed something to get my mind off golf. I started learning how to throw a baseball properly as part of my workout routine (to strengthen my rotator cuff and prevent injury). And when given the opportunity to spend three days with the Class AAA Toledo Mud Hens (a minor league baseball team in the Detroit Tigers organization), I took advantage of it.
I got to pitch and hit batting practice, field grounders and fly balls, and hang out with the professional baseball players. It made me feel like I was eleven years old again—back playing baseball in San Diego. It was just a lot of fun. It didn’t seem to go over too well with the golf media, though. At any rate, it was just one more thing to deal with in a tough year.
I also made a dumb, off-hand comment about Tiger Woods having inferior equipment—and it got twisted around to sound like the worst thing in the world. If you’re in front of the camera every day for an extended period of time, you’re bound to say stupid things you wish you could take back. So in an effort to end the controversy, I went in front of the cameras and essentially apologized to everybody. I believe Tiger and I have a good relationship and I felt bad that I might have said something that came across as disrespectful.
After all that happened in 2003, I was really feeling low. That’s when Steve Taylor, my distant cousin and financial adviser, came over and had a heart-to-heart talk with me. Actually, he kind of slapped me in the face. “Listen, Phil,” he said, “I want you to understand what’s happening in your career and where it’s heading. Right now, you are getting paid like a superstar, but you’re not playing like one. So the first thing that’ll happen is that you’ll lose your sponsorships. And it will get worse from there. I’m not saying you need to play better. I’m not trying to put pressure on you. I’m just telling you the facts.”
I thought a lot about that conversation. Many top athletes don’t have anybody around who will tell them the truth. But here I was getting a good dose of the truth—and from a guy who manages my finances, but has never asked for anything or taken a dime from me.
Well, that slap in the face was just what I needed. It was time for me to make some changes—with both my attitude and the mechanics in my golf game.
The first thing I did was to consciously decide that I was going to put the entire year behind me. Don’t think about it. Don’t rehash it. Don’t worry about it. Period. So I did not touch a golf club from mid-November until January 1, 2004.
The second thing I did was place a phone call to Rick Smith, my friend and long-game coach. “Rick,” I said, “I need you to develop a game plan for me. You decide what I need to work on and how I need to achieve it.
Then I called Dave Pelz, my friend and short-game coach. “Dave, I need you to help me bring out my short game. I know I have the talent to be very effective from 150 yards, but I need you to develop a game plan on how to make it happen. What is it I need to practice? How do I practice? What do I do?”
Dave and I started working together right after the new year. He’s one of the most interesting people I know. A former NASA scientist who worked on the first lunar landing, he eventually went out on his own because he loved golf so much. He started collecting all this scientific data from professional golfers—how they played certain holes, where to save strokes, where most strokes are lost. And over thirty years or so, he’s accumulated a mountain of useful information—stuff that I just find absolutely fascinating. Let me give you an example.
Dave found out that the average margin of error is seven percent for a good player on the Tour. So a 200-yard shot will miss by fourteen yards either way. The very best ball-strikers on Tour have a five percent margin of error. So a 200-yard shot will miss by ten yards either way. See how it works? As a result, whenever I’m playing golf, I always keep in mind that the average margin of error is five to seven percent. If I have a 150-yard shot, I know I’m likely to miss it within either seven or eight yards to the right—or within seven or eight yards to the left. That’s why I’m always talking about “missing” my way around golf courses—especially at Augusta National. In other words, I play like I’ll probably miss a shot, but only by a certain small percentage.
Dave Pelz is also one of the world’s foremost short-game experts. He specializes in chipping and putting. So we spent a great deal of time working on distance control around the greens and with short irons—especially wedges. With him coaching me, I hit thousands of golf balls and worked specifically on controlling the distance the ball flew and how much the ball spun after it landed. That practice really helped me improve and perfect my short game.
Phil has the ability to hit a wedge shot 132 yards rather than 137 yards. But it took years of training to be able to gain that skill. It’s a combination of perfecting swing mechanics without fundamental errors—and developing proper club contact with the ball. Then, if you repeat it often enough, it gets committed to the subconscious. And when it all comes together, a proper shot results from a combined feeling in the hands, arms, and body.
The key is to get to the point where you’re not thinking about it anymore; where it becomes like breathing; where you have a tremendously well-trained system that knows what it’s going to do before it does it.
Dave Pelz, Phil’s Short-Game Coach
Dave Pelz and I did a neat little trick a few years ago for the Golf Channel during the midst of all this practice. He stood three feet in front of me and I hit a flop shot over his head onto the green. The interesting thing about that is that Dave is 6859 tall and the ball was above his head before it was even halfway to him. By the way, Pelz didn’t even flinch when I swung the club! He’s either fearless or overly trusting.
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I also worked very hard on my long game with Rick Smith. One of the things we concentrated on was my driving—which was horrible in 2003 (I only hit 49 percent of the fairways). Rick and I have been working together since 1996, and he keeps track of every one of my golf swings. He went back and analyzed all that data in the computer and determined that I tended to get a little looser with my lower body when I was hitting the driver. In other words, I wasn’t as stable. To fix that problem, I really started stepping up my martial arts work.
Rick also had me work on three main elements of my game. First, we focused on accuracy with the long clubs. I needed to do a better job of keeping the ball in play. So we throttled back a little bit on my aggressiveness with the driver and 3-wood. I stopped trying to slam the ball with a hook (which produces more distance) and started hitting a more controlled fade. Second, we worked very hard on distance control with my iron shots. I hit thousands and thousands of golf balls—and got to the point where I could predict within a couple of yards just how far the ball would go with each club.
It wasn’t a matter of taming Phil’s aggressiveness. It was a matter of creating a kind of “controlled aggression.” Imagine competing against a guy who is consistent, accurate, and has incredible distance abilities—but one who can also get it up and down from the trees or never panic when he hits a bad shot. That combination is very hard to beat.
When you’re working on long-distance shots, missing it a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right is not a big deal. But being short or long is a big deal. So, technically, we worked on distance accuracy with the long irons.
Rick Smith, Phil’s Long-Game Coach
The third thing Rick and I worked on was taking the right side out of play. We actually worked on taking both sides out of play, but it’s easier to make an aggressive swing and take out the right side. As a lefty, if I hit a hook, the ball comes off the face of the club faster because the face is squared-up and has less loft. It also has a faster ball speed. So when a hooked ball hits the ground, it’s traveling at a lot faster speed. Therefore, it continues to run off line into further and deeper trouble. When I hit a fade, however, the face of the club opens up and adds loft. So the ball comes off the club a little slower, higher, and with less speed. And when it lands on the ground, it hits very softly and stops rolling. So my misses to the left are less likely to get me in trouble. To the right, the ball goes faster, farther, hotter, and continues going off line. That’s why Rick and I worked so hard at taking the right side out of play—because my misses to the left don’t get me in as much trouble. In business terms, I guess you could say that I was cutting my risk.
Of course, I’m not the first golfer to use this strategy. Jack Nicklaus, in his book Golf My Way, wrote that he would aim down the left edge of the fairway and hit a fade to the right. He would know the ball couldn’t go left, so all he would have to worry about was not cutting the ball more than the width of the fairway. (Jack is a right-handed golfer, so he worked on taking the left side out of play; opposite from a lefty). Ben Hogan also did the same thing. And, of course, Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan were two of the very best drivers in the history of golf.
During this time, I also spent a great deal of time with my strength and conditioning coach, Sean Cochran—who used to work with the San Diego Padres. He helped me strengthen stabilizer muscles in my hips and legs, improve my overall core body strength, and increase my stamina.
I started on a regular exercise routine to enhance my cardiovascular condition. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: 30 minutes on cardiovascular work, core strength, and balance. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays: 45 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes on flexibility, 30 minutes on martial arts.
And we changed my nutritional plan. No more simple sugars. No more buns for my In-N-Out cheeseburgers. No more doughnuts. More protein and complex carbohydrates. Rather than two or three big meals a day, I eat six small meals. That keeps my energy level running on high.
It all really worked, too. I lost fifteen pounds and got myself in the best physical condition of my life. So as the 2004 PGA Tour started to rev up, I was determined to put everything to good use. Dave Pelz’s advice. Rick Smith’s advice. Sean Cochran’s training. My tighter swings. My new outlook. Everything.
Walking down the #10 fairway, I hear one of those tremendous roars coming from the 11th green. K. J. Choi has just holed his second shot from 220 yards out in the fairway for an incredible eagle. Is the Masters magic starting? Now I’m recalling that old saying: “The Masters doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday.”
Okay, here we go! I’m only a shot back!
As I enter the edge of the woods, I see that my drive has left me under a tree. However, I’ll still have a fairly open shot to the green. But when I come up on the ball, I notice that it’s not only sitting on pine needles with a downhill lie, there is a pinecone resting against the front of my ball.
“Hey, Bones, look at this,” I say. “We’ve got a pinecone in front of the ball.” Bones looks at me and smiles.
“Wow,” I’m thinking. “This is really cool.”
When Philip was a teenager, he called me out into the back yard one day. He was standing in the bunker facing the neighbor’s house. There was a golf ball on the upslope part of the bunker (in the grass)—and he was poised to hit it.
“Mom!” he said. “Watch this.”
“Philip,” I said, “you know the rule! You’re not supposed to be aiming toward the neighbor’s house!” Of course, he ignored me and swung anyway. Well, the ball flew back up over his shoulder and landed on the green behind him about a foot away from the flagstick.
“Philip, that’s not funny!” I said.
But he just smiled and looked so proud of himself.
Mary Mickelson
When I got home from work, Philip showed me that backwards shot he had finally perfected. A lot of people limit themselves. They don’t even think about doing something like that because it’s out of bounds—or out of their frame of mind.
Over the years, Philip used his creative spark to dream up all kinds of crazy, out-of-the-ordinary shots. The tougher the shot, the neater he thought it was.
Phil Mickelson, Sr.
Some people would say that this is a risky shot. With a pinecone in front, you just don’t know how the ball is going to come out. But I’ve hit so many shots with things in front of my ball that I know exactly how the ball is going to react. It’s still a tough shot, but the pinecone being in front is not going to affect the flight of the ball at all. A pinecone behind the ball would be brutal because I would not be able to make solid contact. But in this case, the pinecone is in front of, and below the equator of the ball. Therefore, all the pinecone will do is compress the ball into its face. There will be no effect. My ball will go exactly where I want it to go. It’ll be as if there was no pinecone there in the first place.
I take out a four iron and play a very similar shot to those I’ve hit all week. I aim at the bunker on the right side of the green and hit a slight fade. As I swing, the pinecone goes ten to fifteen yards down the fairway—and my ball stops right on the front fringe of the green. That was a good shot.
Okay, now I’m enjoying myself.
As I’m walking up to the green, I’m thinking I’ll be able to putt this one close to the hole and at least make par. But it doesn’t work out that way. I have a very large right to left break and the right side bunker extends into my line. So I can’t putt the ball. I have to chip it. I pull out my wedge. I have a skinny, little lie (not a lot of grass under my ball)—so I can’t get much spin on the ball to get it stopped. I hit the ball over the right edge of the bunker. But I hit it a touch too hard, it breaks ten to twelve inches, and runs about ten feet past the hole. I definitely would like for it to have been closer.
Now I have one of the biggest putts of the tournament. I simply must knock this one in to save par.
I hit a great putt. The ball just barely catches the right edge
of the cup and falls in.
“All right!” I say.
Then I give it a little fist pump.
“Yes!”
All of us in the family have been here so many times that we stand in the same spots around each hole. And over the years, it just seems like something magical always happens on the back nine. At this point, Phil was very much still in it—but we just needed that little bit of magic. When he made that ten-foot par putt, my immediate reaction was: “Here we go!”
Amy Mickelson
That was a big putt for me. I did not give a shot back to the field. And the birdie holes are coming up.
PLAYER
SCORE
HOLE
Els
-5
11
Mickelson
-4
10
Langer
-4
10
Garcia
-3
18
DiMarco
-3
10
Choi
-3
12
Casey
-3
10
Singh
-2
15
Love III
-2
14
Couples
-2
14
Wittenberg (A)
E
17
Howell III
E
13
Price
E
13
Triplett