Some research published recently showed that when Tiger Woods is in a competition other players perform worse than when he is not. The suggestion is that his mere presence sows the seeds of failure in their minds. Someone who might have a thought about that is Stewart Cink. After sealing his final date with the world’s number one, he must surely have cast his mind back two years to their last bruising putter-to-putter encounter. Who can forget the Bridgestone Invitational of 2006, the one Tiger won after lobbing a ball over the clubhouse roof, after his worst run of straight bogeys ...

Out Tucson way it ain’t over till the Coyotes howl, and then some. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in wondering what household chores I should be doing as Vijay Singh and Rod Pampling trudged round those extra holes in seemingly eternal stalemate. I’d picked the American to win, but was just glad someone finally had the nous to finish the job before everyone was engulfed in desert darkness. Otherwise, what a(nother) splendid day’s golf. Tiger Woods’s tense tussle with Aaron Baddeley will live long in the memory - 12 birdies and still he almost failed to get the job done. That’s ...

How Henrik Stenson is still in this thing is anyone’s guess. Not only did he play the worst shot in the competition, if not the history of professional golf, on Wednesday (running it pretty close on the same 18th hole the next day), but Trevor Immelman should have buried him Thursday, if only to make up for the fact that Robert Allenby should have dispatched him the day before. Let’s hear it for the Phil Mickelson fans who might justly point to the Swede’s continued participation when poor Lefty departs after notching up a round with seven birdies. For once I ...

Wow! Wasn’t that lucky! No, not Tiger Woods’s recovery against J B Holmes, but the fact that his survival saves the competition from going prematurely flat. However, I throw the word in as it seems from comments I read there is a conspiracy afoot, of which I am apparently a part, to say everything Phil Mickelson does is lucky and everything Woods does is down to sheer brilliance. Is there a problem with that? I jest - a bit. I have to, because even Tiger admits Wednesday’s result owed something to luck, mainly the way Holmes opened the door with a ...

Welcome to the wacky world of match play. Or at least that is what everyone is trying to have us a believe with headlines like ‘A lottery’, ‘Crap shoot’, ‘Tales of the unexpected’, even ‘March madness’ (did I miss something?). I used to think the same, but looking over the Match Play records of our contestants I’m not so sure. Many of them seem the model of consistency, although the jury is still out on the true effect of moving to the desert. Mike Weir for instance has never gone past the 3rd round in seven tries and only once has ...

Imagine Phil Mickelson as Tina Turner, only this time singing “What’s luck got to do with it?” I know, it’s a stretch, but the real question is how much he’s entitled to sing it. He was, after all, extremely lucky with the weather, missing out on the winds that allowed him and 54 others who kicked off Thursday morning through to the weekend, against just 23 who started Thursday afternoon. He was also very lucky in just having one inexperienced opponent to finish off on the Sunday. It was Jeff Quinney’s four-bogey stretch down the back nine that sealed the deal ...

The golfing gods left Phil Mickelson to his own devices Saturday, which at least means we have the vestiges of a competition on day four. This is now widely taken to be a virtual match play, quite appropriate given next week’s little shindig in Tucson. Lefty is obviously the heavy favourite with his one-shot advantage over the intrepid Jeff Quinney. The market has already made its mind up, pricing Mickelson at 1.4 to Quinney’s 4.4. But hold on a minute, that’s not as resounding a vote of confidence as you might think. To put it in perspective, Tiger Woods was 1.6 ...

It is as if all the heavenly bodies have aligned for Phil Mickelson to win this. Maybe they had a meeting up in Heavenly HQ and decided Lefty couldn’t do it by himself. Did he get the best of the weather or what? At least he acknowledges the fact. Oh and a big thank you to the weather people for getting that one wrong again. The day was turned on its head as the tricky winds from Thursday afternoon blew over into Friday morning. The difference is quite startling: those who went out early Thursday averaged 71.3 and came back Friday ...

It’s been 10 long years since a first-round winner went on to take the spoils at the Riviera country club - Billy Mayfair, who you will note is hovering three shots off the pace after round one. But if there’s a man to follow in his footsteps it’s K J Choi, who will almost certainly go into the second round as leader. He’s three from four for converting first round leads into wins. If only it were that easy. The course was up to its usual windy tricks Thursday and Choi enjoyed by far the most benign conditions of the day. ...

Tiger Woods? Who he? We should thank our lucky stars he’s not in this competition so’s we don’t have to talk constantly about the battle for second place. As it is we have the cream from the two big tours clashing in one of the season’s more up-market events. What we learn from the past is that you need a whacking driver, nifty irons and the usual fiery putter. Accuracy off the tee is not vital, although the rough is no picnic. Trouble is you are spoilt for choice: there are more in-form players and/or past winners than you can shake ...

If you’ve ever monitored an in-play betting market or tables like the ones I produce, you might wonder who the generous souls are that lay players right down to the wire when they are clearly home and hosed. The squeals of anguish and gentle sobbing of Vijay Singh backers who didn’t “lay off” their profits when his price hit the floor Sunday will give you a strong clue. Singh’s price went right down to 1.05 amid such complacent forum statements as “Who on earth is going to beat him?” and “All over … can’t imagine him losing from here". Heck, even ...

Saturday was a tale of two putters. Phil Mickelson went from 26 putts per round on Friday to 33 (and nearly 2 putts per green in regulation) while Vijay Singh went from 32 putts in round two to 28 on Saturday (1.6 PPG). Not hard to figure who’s top of the leaderboard and who missed the cut. Mickelson’s dramatic exit must be especially hard because the rest of his game was clearly coming round. He actually equalled Singh for finding greens Saturday, topping 80 per cent for only the second round this season. His accuracy off the tee was almost the ...

I never had Padraig Harrington or Phil Mickelson down as shy, retiring types, but what else can explain their reluctance to join proceedings at the top of the table? Of the heavyweights in this competition, it’s still down to good old Vijay Singh to growl at the leaders from three shots off the pace. But it is a growl rather than a roar. It says something for the lack of bite to this competition so far that his putting was actually worse in round two. He now ranks 152nd for putts per round for goodness sake, and that shouldn’t be anywhere ...

Memo to self: Steve Elkington simply doesn’t do the AT&T Pebble Beach, okay? Instead of looking at his racy start to the season and the fine set of stats it has produced, I should have been looking back over his last six Pebble Beach efforts: MC-69-MC-MC-69-46. That’s more like it. There’s one thing you can say for his scorecard Thursday - it’s very colourful, with the two blue birdies, the four orange bogeys and the two red double bogeys. As the weekly golf column says: A Lesson Learned. It was the most glaring of the strange crop of results from round ...

Over the last two weeks Phil Mickelson’s golf has veered from the sublime to the ridiculous. A quick look at his stats suggests he’s still a long way off the top of his game. But there isn’t much ridiculous about the 6th and 2nd places (first in regular play) he has earned in that fortnight. Tiger Woods it ain’t, but it’s emphatically the next best thing. No surprise then that he is the hot pick for a tournament where he is the defending champion and three-time winner. Lefty loves Pebble Beach in the way Tiger loves Torrey Pines and must really ...