AT&T Pebble Beach round one: Mickelson springs back, but watch out for Furyk

So is he back? Has Phil Mickelson finally come out of hibernation? He “ripped the ball beautifully, putted confidently” in the words of one scribe and capped it with an eagle. It’s the best he’s played Poppy Hills at least since the turn of the century and he’s so fired up he’s even thinking of entering next week’s Nissan Open, a competition he is not generally fond of.

But talk about slow: if snails played golf they’d be faster. Players were queueing upwards of 40 minutes to get on the final holes and rounds were taking more than six hours. That’s gross.

It’s also a pretty monumental test of patience, especially with the winds that blasted the courses Thursday. Pebble Beach, playing by far the hardest because of its greater exposure (stroke averages: Pebble Beach 75; Spyglass Hill 73.2; Poppy Hills 71.7), was virtually four strokes harder than last year’s first round. The forecasts see little let-up, only more rain. It’s a sign of Mickelson’s new mood that his reaction was ‘bring it on’. Ho hum. We’ll see if he’s in the same mood after being blown round Pebble Beach today.

Jim Furyk carded an impressive 67 on Spyglass Hill in the teeth of some of the worst weather. It’s also his best showing this side of 2000 on a course where he usually struggles to get below 70. I passed him over because his AT&T record is not exactly stellar, save for a fifth place in 2003. But watch out this time: he is second overall for greens in regulation and fourth for putting.

As for the other two co-leaders Friday morning: John Mallinger’s 65 is remarkable for coming on Pebble Beach, but it was largely achieved in the calm before storm. As for the people’s choice, Californian Nick Watney, I am aware he lists Pebble Beach as his favourite course and is on a steady string of good results, but I find it hard to believe a putts per GIR average of 1.8 is going to win it, for all his excellent iron work.

Something else the AT&T won’t be won by is woeful performances like those of Mike Weir and Luke Donald. It was a bit harsh of one forumite to describe the play of Donald and Padraig Harrington as “typical gutless European performances” - is the Ryder Cup already a distant memory? - but you’d have thought an Irishman like Harrington would have been at home in the wind and if Donald has any pretentions to rubbing shoulders with Tiger Woods this is not the way.

The other really big disappointment of course was Vijay Singh, with his worst Spyglass performance this century, equalling the 73 in 2005 when he missed the cut. You can only shake your head and move on.

PS: I see the Canadians would love to fill the vacancy left by the demise of the International. But if so, why is RCGA President Stephen Ross sitting on his backside north of the border instead of flying down to hound and harrass PGA commissioner Tim Finchem until he does the decent thing? If it’s not American Finchem doesn’t seem to care (Canada, where’s that?). You’ve got to make him care, Stephen.