Deutsche Bank Championship round two: Funny you should say that, Mickelson

It’s interesting how differently two people can say exactly the same thing. For Rory Sabbatini, getting paired with Tiger Woods in the final round of a competition is basically ‘Yeah bring it on, Tiger’s beatable’. For Phil Mickelson it’s simply ‘That would be fun’. But you know he and Rory are as one on what they mean.

Rory’s line, though, is guaranteed to get right up Tiger’s nose and fire him up. Phil’s “fun” can hardly be so counter-productive, even if it does echo Butch Harmon’s “fun summer” challenge after Lefty won The Players. I certainly know which out of Rory and Phil I would pick to give Woods a run for his money in a final round head-to-head.

Talking of Harmon, I imagine not a few people are going bananas trying to work out what it is he told Lefty about Tiger’s on-course habits. Mickelson refused to put flesh on the bare bones, but took great pleasure in telling us how it made him chuckle as he spotted the traits during their two days together. I can only imagine it’s little tricks Tiger uses to try to dominate his surroundings and put his opponents in their place. Obviously it didn’t work Saturday as Mickelson matched his 64 and Vijay Singh produced a spectacular recovery to make monkeys of those who had written him off. That’d be me then!

But at least I didn’t write Tiger off like a few foolish souls now either bemoaning their fate on the forums or insisting he still can’t win from three shots back with two rounds still to go. For some people the earth is still flat. I don’t imagine those ahead of Tiger on the leaderboard are too comfortable about his looming presence, knowing what he hit on Saturday.

In fact I would guess there’s only one person that doesn’t have cause for undue concern and that’s Mickelson, who is playing a really solid all round game - he’s even managing to find almost all his fairways!

Face it, but for one errant drive that led to a triple bogey in round one - the only hole in two rounds on which he has dropped shots - Lefty would be two shots clear of the field now. And wouldn’t that be fun?