FBR Open round one: Hope for Mickelson as the sun comes out to play

None of that was in the script. Cloudy, wet, cold, dark? Excuse me, is this Arizona or Ireland? There’s not a few golfers praying the weather clears up Friday and lets them play their normal game.

When the last light had faded Thursday, leaving poor Tripp Isenhour stranded on the 18th hole, the numbers were nothing like what had been expected. Forget distance play - the average position of Thursday’s top 7 for distance was 87th (against just under 23rd for the top 5 last year). Accuracy? Slightly better but still 55th against 34th last year.
The people who really prospered Thursday worked their irons well and, above all, kept their noses clean on the receptive greens - average position of the top 7 for putting was just under 10th and included the hottest putt-sinker of the day, Aaron Baddeley.

The good news for the those caught out by these freakish conditions is that it’s going to get sunnier and drier over the weekend, which means your balls will soon start fizzing through the rarefied air like they should do. So the top of the leaderboard might well look a bit different come Saturday.

So maybe there’s hope yet for Phil Mickelson, one of those to suffer from Thursday’s conditions. A price of nearly 40 when he’s six shots off the lead with three rounds to go is a bit tempting. Sure, he desperately needs to “speed up” as he puts it, but he was in this position on day two when he won two years ago.