Deutsche Bank Championship round four: Lefty lays the ghost of Winged Foot

It’s the new Phil Mickelson talking point: which is more important for Lefty, his victory in The Players or triumph in this bruising toe-to-toe encounter with the best golfer in the world?

The Players is a major (ish) and they don’t come much better than that, although it would be nice to see him bag the Open Championship at some point. But XM Radio’s Maureen Madill captured my thoughts after Monday’s Deutsche Bank win: this was a pivotal victory in which he stared down Tiger Woods for all the world to see and may finally have laid to rest the ghost of Winged Foot. In fact that’s far too tentative for me. I’m as sure as can be the ghost of Winged Foot has been well and truly busted, even though it momentarily reared its head again on Monday. You don’t slug it out in the same pairing with Tiger Woods for three rounds and finally choke him off down the back nine of the last round without a huge and lasting sense of achievement.

Obviously those tips Butch Harmon gave Phil about what Tiger gets up to with his playing partners worked a treat. The main one probably was something like: “Play your own game and don’t let him take the place over". And what a game Phil played. I cannot recall him posting such awesome all-round stats: 4th for distance off the tee, 4th would you believe for accuracy off the tee (missing just 13 fairways all week), and 4th for putting, which didn’t just win him holes but got him out of trouble on many others. Only his irons let him down - he came 8th for greens in regulation! Shocking!

An idea of how fired up he was Monday was that his putting was by far the best it had been all week, with 11 one putts. In all four days he only dropped shots on three holes, albeit two of them double bogeys. It was the second of those that had me preparing to write about another Winged Foot moment as he lost his way disastrously off the tee on the 12th. He didn’t do in-play punters many favours by letting Tiger & Co back into contention there. Maybe Lefty will always be prone to the odd moment of madness. As long as he ends up winning, who cares?

As for Tiger, I thought he was remarkably cheery for someone who had just been stiffed by his arch rival - he was even cracking jokes afterwards! But you’ve got to think he’ll be back with a vengeance in Chicago next week. I imagine Lefty sees winning the FedEx Cup as putting a huge cap on a season that so far has promised more than it has delivered, which is probably why he has been so enthusiastic about it all along. Tiger has seemed much more ambivalent, but I can’t think he’ll enjoy Lefty rubbing his nose in it any more than he has done. I would suggest some solid putting practice first though.

So more of the same next week as the two rivals trade shots in a two-round threesome with Steve Stricker at Chicago. Mock the FedEx Cup if you will, decry the pairing system as a gimmick if you dare. I think it’s been just great and, as long as the players stick with it, I definitely think - and hope - it’ll catch on.