The debacle at the fourth hole (Getty Images)

What were we just saying about I.K. Kim? Time to envelop Lefty in a group hug for his near miss at the 2012 Masters. If you’re a Philly fan, that is. One of my friends who was over for our Easter feast and Masters viewing yesterday was cackling about Phil’s misfortune while rooting for Miguel Angel Jimenez. (This in vain, as Jimenez crashed and burned yesterday with an 81, going five-over on the last three holes.)

I was pulling for Phil, though, and hated to see the debacle on the fourth hole. In an otherwise fine three-under round, the triple at the par-3 left him even par on the day, and two strokes shy of making the playoff.

Even a bogey on the fourth hole would have at least put Phil in the hunt with Louis Oosthuizen and eventual winner Bubba Watson. If he walked off four with a par he would have won the tournament.

Although that last paragraph is true only if you don’t agree about the Fallacy of the Predetermined Outcome.

The what? I first heard of this in baseball terms, as the Theory of the Predetermined Hit. So, in baseball terms, say Daniel Murphy of the Mets doubles. David Wright comes to bat, but Murphy gets picked off second. Then Wright homers, and everyone says the Mets would have had two runs if bonehead Murphy hadn’t been picked off.

David Wright celebrates a round-tripper (Getty Images)

It’s not so, because there’s no certainty–absolutely no predetermination–that Wright would homer if Murphy wasn’t picked off. After all, everything would have been different–the pitcher’s motion, the way the infield set up, the pitch selection, not to mention Wright’s own perceptions. If Murphy were still sagely perched on second, there’s nothing to say that Wright couldn’t just as easily strike out. Sure, he might hit a home run, and the Mets might score two runs. But there’s no guarantee.

It’s no different in golf. If Phil walked off the fourth hole with a par he might have gone on to garner three birdies and the win. But with all new variables–the hole played more quickly, the wind perhaps freshening at a different time on a different hole, the reactions of other players to Phil’s total on the scoreboard, not to mention Phil’s own perceptions–there’s nothing to say that he wouldn’t have blown up on another hole. Or something else might have happened.

Or if Oosthuizen’s remarkable albatross did not make its long and incredible journey across the second hole green, who knows what change that would have precipitated in the brains of Mickelson or Watson, who was playing with Louis?

It’s like the old time-space continuum from the “Back to the Future” films. Change one thing, and every other anticipated thing can go haywire.

Still, it’s only human nature to speculate on what might have been. And no doubt Phil has done plenty of that already.

All the golf pundits were predicting an exciting Masters going into the tournament, and so it was, but probably for none of the reasons prophesized. No complaints, though. The lasting memories will come down to three shots–Michelson’s gaffe, Oosthuizen’s double eagle, and Watson’s recovery shot on the second playoff hole to set up his winning par.

Related Posts:
Masters Redux: Mickelson Pulls Off the Great Shot
Phil Mickelson With a Glazed (Donut) Look in His Eye
Oh Oh Oh!
Group Hug for I.K. Kim

For more great stories on Augusta and the Masters by TheAPosition.com writers, click here.

Caddie John Limanti tries to comfort I.K. Kim after her blown putt. (Getty Images)

The shock of missing what appeared to be a gimme one-foot putt to win a major was all too evident on I.K. Kim’s face on Sunday. Had she sunk the putt on the 18th hole she would have won the Kraft Nabisco Championship and had the pleasure of the traditional leap into the pond at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage.

It was a cruel April Fool’s Day rim job, and while Kim quickly knocked the next putt in, she was clearly still so stunned that caddie John Limanti came over and gave her a quick hug.  Didn’t we all want to give her a hug?

Kim made the playoff with Sun Young Yoo, but the fight was obviously out of her, and she lost on the first hole. Her post-round interview was a brave affair, since it was also obvious that she wanted to go bury her head in a pillow and wail.

Well, who hasn’t been there? The humiliation of failing at a perceptibly simple task has afflicted us all, hence the compassion for Kim. Amateurs don’t do it on such a public stage, but even collapsing in the throes of a $2 Nassau can leave scars.

Caddie Eddie McKenzie at Pinehurst No. 2

I know, having just returned from a glorious week at Pinehurst, including play on the No. 2 course, complete with veteran caddie Eddie McKenzie (more of whom at a later date). I had chipped one close to the pin on one hole, and Eddie said, “Heck, Ray Charles could make that putt.”

Unfortunately, the putt wasn’t conceded, and I was standing over it instead of Ray. I blew it right by the cup, failed to win the hole and the match ultimately ended up all square.

As I say, hardly a major, and not for the big bucks. Still, in the grand scheme, I could have used a hug.

Geoffrey Cornish with the woman he always referred to as his "bride," Carol.

Geoffrey Cornish rose, as usual, at about 3 a.m. He had gone to bed the night before, as usual, at about 7 p.m. He is not a font of information about the latest TV shows.

He dressed more or less as usual: brown loafers, brown socks, brown slacks, a muted teal shirt, a brown patterned tie, a grayish sweater and a brown tweedish jacket. It was mid-October. He would, after a few hours of work in his home office, slip into a red Chevrolet Cavalier convertible, but he would later aver that, “It belongs to my bride of sixty years; I’m not the sports car type.”

He did, however, wear a golf cap, this sporty note being the sole clue that its wearer might have a nodding acquaintance with the royal and ancient game.

His acquaintance is a bit more than nodding. Since he first hung out his golf architecture shingle in 1952, he has designed, expanded or remodeled upwards of 250 courses, largely in New England, conspicuously in Massachusetts. He has written several books on golf course architecture, including the seminal The Architects of Golf (with Ron Whitten).

Cornish in his ASGCA blazer

He joined the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1967, served as president in 1975, and was honored with its Donald Ross Award in 1982. He was given an honorary membership in the British Association of Golf Course Architects, an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, named to the Royal Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and… and the list goes on and on. The man is a walking institution, with the emphasis on the walking.

This morning he was leaving his home in Amherst while it was still dark and driving about two hours north to tromp around the Manchester Country Club in Vermont, which he laid out in 1969. He had an early morning appointment with Steve Durkee, who has won acclaim for his work at Okemo Valley Golf Club and other Vermont layouts. Durkee, who had grown up playing on the Manchester course, had the job of re-doing Cornish’s back nine.

“It really is a kind of homecoming,” said Durkee, “and a great opportunity to work with Mr. Cornish and get to know him.”

Durkee’s deference was classy, if probably unnecessary. Cornish bears his reputation lightly indeed, and certainly appears little concerned with his age. He attributes his vigor largely to his incessant walking. When reworking some holes at a course in Minnesota, Cornish hooked up with doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. They talked him into a stress test, and the results were astonishing. “I may be 87,” he said, “but they told me I had the heart of a 37-year-old.”

He also says to his wife, Carol, that his memory is as sharp as ever, and indeed, he could recall aspects of the Manchester construction (“We brought up two feet of loam…”) 32 years after the fact. If he was a little rusty on names, he claimed that it was because he knew so many people. (And it is Carol’s department to remember the names anyway.)

The famous seventeenth hole maple tree at the Manchester Country Club, Vermont

Cornish’s visit was more than a courtesy call. Durkee was puzzled about what to do with the seventeenth hole, a dogleg left with a tee shot complicated by an enormous maple, then in full autumn blaze.

“I used to work for the great Stanley Thompson,” says Cornish, referring to the legendary Canadian course architect. “Stan told me, ‘I always build one controversial hole. It keeps the members arguing long enough to let me get the rest of the course in shape.’ Well, this is probably one of the more controversial holes in New England. We’ve been playing around with it for 32 years. Steve has to figure it out now.” But Cornish, as was his wont, was willing to help.

Six Weeks

Cornish was born in August, 1914 in Winnipeg. The family moved west to British Columbia, and he eventually wound up studying for a degree in agronomy at the University of British Columbia. Thompson was building Capilano in Vancouver, and he came to the University to find someone who knew something about soils. “Stanley emphasized, ‘I won’t be able to keep you for more than six weeks.’ That was still the Depression, and any job that came along you took. I was happy I took that one. It was 66 years ago, so that six weeks has been extended.

The Toronto Terror, Stanley Thompson

“Stanley taught me a tremendous amount. He was the exponent of the principles of art in golf course design, which is why Nicklaus, Cupp, Morrish and the like all went out and studied Banff. He also started Trent Jones out, which was a great thing–if you look at it objectively, I think that Trent has contributed to our art form more than anyone else. I stayed with Stan until I joined the Canadian Army and went overseas.”

Cornish landed at Normandy on D-Day. “But I landed that evening, and that was altogether different than the earlier landing–we walked ashore.” The war did have a profound impact upon him, however.

“When you’ve been in the army during war, you’re sure not interested in yourself too much after that. You lose your sense of competition. People have said to me, ‘You have no competitive spirit.’ And I have to say I really don’t.”

Though he plunged right back into work with Thompson, he’s never considered it such: “I claim I’ve never done a day’s work since I got out of the army in 1945. Designing golf courses and meeting a lot of nice people can hardly be called work–but I can see how it grips everybody.”

For a guy with no competitive spirit, Cornish’s listing of credits in his own The Architects of Golf runs to seven columns–barely shy of the ink spilled for Donald Ross or Trent Jones.

His attitude didn’t hurt: “I’m no noble guy, but I tried to help other people get into the business, too, and they all reciprocated over the years.” It also didn’t hurt, Cornish noted, to have taught over 100 students at the University of Massachusetts, a post he took up in 1949. But a pleasant demeanor and even a liberal grading policy will go only so far if you can’t deliver the goods.

Cornish started delivering in the recovery years after the war. “No one, particularly in New England, had enough money to build a golf course, and if they had there was no one who could pay enough green fees.” He and his new bride, who Cornish credits as the power behind the throne, figured out that having floodlit pitch and putt courses would keep people happy.

“I used to charge 75 cents a round. The idea spread and people began to hire me to lay courses out for $500. I must have done about 15 up and down the east coast. A few still exist, such as the one in Brewster. Literally hundreds of people came up to me in years to come and said, ‘We started golf at one of your pitch and putts.’”

Mrs. Cornish started at the one they owned, Little St. Andrews, 18 holes on four acres in Shrewsbury. “On the first hole, about 80 yards long, she topped the ball, and the darn thing rolled into the hole. Then she said, ‘What do I do next?’”

Cornish turned next to his first full-length course, amazingly enough, the fullest length there was, the International Golf Club in Bolton.

Bert Surprenant was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts, and perhaps one of the most eccentric, and he came to Cornish and said he wanted the world’s longest golf course. “So I gave it to him. I think it was 8,040 yards from back tees when it opened [in 1956, two years after Cornish became an American citizen]. They’ve continually added length to it to make sure it stays the world’s longest. It’s now 8,375. Number five is the big one. Bert wanted a hole that no one would reach on their second shot, a 640-yard par-5, but on opening day, Paul Harney cut the corner and hit the green on his second. Bert had a fit.”

Further on Down the Road

While Cornish will let a few names slip about Massachusetts tracks he believes exemplify his best work–the country clubs of Crestview, Foxborough, Spring Valley, the all par-3 Blue Rock in South Yarmouth, which set off a par-3 course boom across the nation in the early sixties–he’s reluctant to name some at the expense of others.

Cornish’s last full new 18 was the Center Valley Club in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which opened in 1994. He claims he designs these days, “When the young people let me,” the young people being his current partners Brian Silva, Mark Mungeam and Tim Gerrish. In truth he’s doing a surprising amount. “I’m asked to come in and have a look at a lot of the old classical courses they won’t let anybody else on. I can’t mention them because they’re practically bringing me in incognito. If they have a wonderful Robert Trent Jones layout, for example, they don’t particularly want his sons to know I’m in there. But I get around to telling the boys, eventually.”

Cornish doesn’t play golf any more. It used to be a custom that the architect would hit the first ball on opening day. But when he started to top balls on the first tee, without his wife’s success, he gave up the game. “If I’m driving along and see a driving range at night, I’ll go out and hit balls.”

What he is doing is a good deal of writing. He had a book in galley stages last fall, Eighteen Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon and Other Aspects of North American Golf Course Architecture. “The title dates back to when the Scots first came to this country. They’d get a job as a greenkeeper or professional and in their spare time–Sunday afternoons–they’d stake out a golf course. I think the going price was $25.”

Another book further down the road is Golf Holes Classic and Otherwise: Searching for the Roots of an Art Form, done with Robert Muir Graves, Cornish’s partner in ongoing seminars at the Harvard School of Design (from whence came the pair’s first title, the 1998 Golf Course Design).

“It is an art form, in many ways the purest form of landscape architecture–molding the earth and then vegetating it.”

Cornish gets most of his walking in these days with hours-long hikes around the giant freshwater swamp behind his house, taking the neighbors’ dogs with him–as many as 12, but more usually four. “Sometimes my neighbor the evolutionary biologist comes along with another set of dogs, and we talk about it. But he hasn’t quite gotten around to explaining the art of it yet–why, when we arrange something in a certain way, that we feel better just looking at it.

“We’ve really invented the most fascinating profession of our species, wouldn’t you say?”

That's Geoff Cornish on the right in coat and tie during pre-WWII construction of Highland Links in Cape Breton

(Photos of Cornish courtesy of the American Society of Golf Course Architects; Highland Links photo courtesy of Mark Mungeam.)

The youthful Errie Ball

Longevity is trending. Or there’s something in the water. On March 13, Bill Geist did a “CBS Sunday Morning” piece on Lou Batori, still skiing in Nubs Nob, Michigan, at age 100.

A few days later, I saw a report on a 100-year-old man named Fred Mack who celebrated his 100^th birthday by going skydiving in Williamstown, New Jersey.

And then there’s Samuel Henry Ball, also 100, who is better known as Errie Ball, and is the last surviving member of the 72-player field of the inaugural Masters Invitational in 1934.

On April 6, at 5:30 p.m., Ball will be the featured speaker at the PGA Museum of Golf Speaker Series, in the Museum at PGA Village in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Anyone in the vicinity should drop on by–admission is free and open to all–and hear Ball talk about the invitation that came his way from Bobby Jones, to that little tooniment they hold each year in Augusta, Georgia. The chances are good that he might talk about playing with Jones, with Gene Sarazen, or about the putting lesson he once had from Walter Hagan.

[Addendum from 4/11: A video of the talk is now up at the Museum website here.]

Errie Ball at his induction into the PGA Golf Professional Hall of Fame

[Further addendum from 11/3/11: Errie Ball was inducted into the PGA Golf Professional Hall of Fame, in ceremonies held last night at the Museum. A piece about the evening appears here, and here's a photo of the still youthful looking Mr. Ball on stage at the Hall of Fame Ceremony. (Photo by Montana Pritchard, The PGA of America)]

The 1934 Masters wasn’t the last Ball played in. He returned in 1957, establishing another record–at 23 years, the longest span between competitions for any Masters entrant.

Ball, from Wales, began playing the game at age 10, and became a professional when he turned 17. He came from a long line of pros, including his great granduncle, John Ball, who was the first amateur to win the Open Championship (in 1890), as well as eight British Amateur Championships.

Bobby Jones

Jones and Ball met in 1930 at Hoylake, where Jones won the Open Championship as part of his Grand Slam year. Another uncle, Frank Ball, serving as the PGA head professional at the East Lake Country Club in Atlanta, suggested that Errie come to America and establish his professional career here. He was elected to PGA membership in June 1931.

Jones eventually gave him as assist, with a letter of recommendation, that helped Ball land his first head professional post at the Mobile Country Club in Alabama, and he’s never really stopped. As the PGA Golf Professional Emeritus at the Willoughby Golf Club in Stuart, Florida, Ball still gives lessons.

He was no slouch out on the course, either. He won the 1931 Southeastern PGA Championship, the 1932 Atlanta Open, various PGA Section titles, three Illinois PGA Championships, the Illinois Open, and Illinois PGA Senior Open and Match Play Championship.

He competed in 12 PGA Championships and qualified for 20 U.S. Opens.

“Errie Ball is a beloved legend in PGA circles,” said Bob Baldassari, PGA Village general manager. “His recollection of the game is a treat for any golf enthusiast who wishes to trace back to a bygone era and hear first-hand the story of someone that was an eyewitness to golf history.”

Ball is now five years older than the PGA of America, founded in 1916 and celebrating its 95^th this year. He is the second oldest and second longest serving PGA professional.

Bud Lewis of Wyncote, Pennsylvania has him slightly beat. Bud is 102.

Samuel Henry Ball

For more great stories on Augusta and the Masters by TheAPosition.com writers, click here.

Ai Miyazato

Golf was first played in Thailand in 1906, at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. When the Banyan Golf Club in Hua Hin opened in 2009, it became the 260th course in a country roughly the size of France or slightly smaller than Texas. It’s hotter than either.

The LPGA added its glamour this week at its season-opening Honda LPGA Thailand tournament, with a full complement of its stars, including defending champion Ai Miyazato, the Rolex Rankings No. 1 player Yani Tseng–who emerged victorious–Michelle Wie (who finished second), Paula Creamer, Christie Kerr and Natalie Gulbis.

Tseng shot 6-under-par 66 on Sunday to win the Honda LPGA Thailand by five shots over Wie.  Tseng has now entered four events for the season and yes, won four times.

Miyazato, who finished in a tie for 13th, had little to show after the first round, with a three-over-par 75. But Tseng, with three straight wins under her belt, and Hall of Famer Juli Inkster, the oldest player in the field, were three strokes behind the leader, I.K. Kim. The 22-year-old Kim, from South Korea (but now living in San Diego), fired a bogey-free nine-under par 63, a course record.

The course is the Old Course at the Siam Country Club, old being relative, of course. The first privately-owned course in the country was built in 1971 to a design by Isao Mazumi, but re-designed over the same routing by the Schmidt-Curley Design team and reopened in 2007.

Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley (but mainly Schmidt) also did the club’s newer 27-hole Plantation Course. I was lucky enough to play both tracks in 2009, my first visit to the Kingdom of Thailand, and there are certainly similarities between the two: plenty of expansive bunkering, fecund landscaping–such as the ubiquitous elephant-shaped topiary that takes note of the country’s favored pachyderm–and excellent conditioning. (“The greens are awesome,” Paula Creamer tweeted after the first round.)

The Old Course is a relatively flat layout, with a number of up and back holes, but it does have a more comfortably antique, wooded feel to it with its abundant fruits trees and palms, and as one golfer noted, “More shade,” no mean consideration.

Twelfth hole at Siam Country Club

The Plantation Course, by contrast, opened for its first full season in 2008, and is a wide open and rollicking affair, with far more movement in the fairways and on the greens. If the Old Course is a slowly unfolding reverie, the Plantation is a modern drama with sudden loud scene changes, playing out over former pineapple and tapioca fields. For a visitor the usual solution prevails, naturally: play them both.

As for rollicking, the course is near Pattaya, which was nothing more than a fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand over forty years ago, when American military personnel engaged in the Vietnam War turned it into an R&R stop. This may well account for the continuing rambunctious nature of the city, best seen in all its vividness at night in the notorious Walking Street district, which makes Las Vegas look like a church social.

But the action on the course this week was thrilling enough for the top-three players at the end of the tournament, Tseng, Wie and Karrie Webb, who gained exemption into the season-ending Titleholders at Grand Cypress Golf Club in Orlando, November 17-20.

JAMES BRAID (Allsport Hulton/Archive)

So a quick salute to Braid, one the Big Three of his day, along with Harry Vardon and John Henry Taylor.  Indeed, the trio was known as the Great Triumvirate, and their dominance and skills are largely credited with popularizing the game in the early 20^th Century. Professionally, they were instrumental in establishing the PGA.

If a solid player, Braid didn’t achieve his greatest success until after he turned in his wooden putter for a metal-faced flat stick. The putts began to drop, and the championships came his way.

Braid hung up his spikes in 1912, and eventually settled down to a long career as the club pro at Walton Heath, until his death in 1950.

But he then also had a hand in the design or renovation of 200 some courses in the U.K., most notably Carnoustie, the King’s and Queen’s courses at Gleneagles, Aberdovey, Southport, Ainsdale and so on. He employed them enough to often be credited as the father of the dogleg hole, though that’s probably a bit of myth-making stretch.

But one of his oft-repeated quotes remains undeniably great advice after lo these many years: “Keep on hitting it straight until the wee ball goes in the hole.”

Carnoustie

Meanwhile, I’ve just put up a whopper of a piece about Phil right here.  And for more great stories on Augusta and the Masters by TheAPosition.com writers, click here.

Related story:
Group Hug for Phil Mickelson

The shot heard round the world yesterday was Phil Mickelson’s second on the thirteen hole at Augusta National. Mickelson stuck his six iron to within eagle range, off the pine straw, through two pines trees, over Rae’s Creek and safely onto the green about 197 yards away. That he missed the putt didn’t tarnish the brilliance of the shot. He was clearly in the driver’s seat, driving in the zone, and at that point the outcome seemed inevitable, even though sterling play was creating roars all about him.

Winning the Masters yesterday puts Mickelson into some rarified company–now only Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer have won more than Mickelson’s three green jackets. He has four major titles (including the 2005 PGA Championship), and his 39 PGA Tour wins put him 12^th on the all-time win list.

He’s enormously popular with many golf fans, who appreciate that he seems to appreciate them. But others not only can’t warm up to Phil, but seem to take an active dislike to him. I can’t quite understand this, though the suggestion is that there’s something phony about him, including his agreeableness. Others detractors say he’s just too full of himself, and he’s even taken some hits in the past from his fellow pros, albeit usually anonymously. (Although earlier this year, there was the grooves dustup with Scott McCarron.)

Others criticize his play, suggesting that his gambles don’t pay off enough, although the numbers would seem to belie that. Even Mickelson called himself an idiot when his double bogey at Winged Foot on the last hole of the 2006 U.S. Open cost him the tournament.

But don’t look for him to change his style of play any time soon. In his press conference after the Masters win yesterday Mickelson said, “A great shot is when you pull it off. A smart shot is when you don’t have the guts to try it.”

Phil at the Green Jacket ceremony (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

I don’t claim to know Mickelson. My sole interaction with him was one interview of about two hours length early in 2004, when he still had yet to win a major, a burden he was dragging around like Marley’s chains, which may have suggested the ghostly figure I inserted into the piece. As far as the interview went, the lack of majors was more an elephant in the room, and a question I couldn’t avoid asking.

To his credit, Mickelson didn’t dodge it. And overall he struck me as frank, friendly, generous and genuine. If he was wearing a mask, I sure couldn’t detect it. I guess that’s when I became a Phil fan, confirmed yesterday as I was pulling for him.

So I decided to drag this piece out of the vaults just for a little perspective, and also because at the time it seemed prescient. Just after it appeared as the cover story of the Spring 2004 issue of American Airline’s Celebrated Living magazine, Mickelson won his first major title, the 2004 Masters. I present it here more or less in its original form:

O LUCKY MAN

Spring, 2004

The Lodge at Torrey Pines

The view from my room at the Lodge at Torrey Pines looks directly upon the finishing hole at the Torrey Pines South Course. The PGA Tour has shown up here annually since 1968, when the tournament was the Andy Williams San Diego Open Invitational. Now it’s the Buick Invitational, a tournament Phil Mickelson won in 1993, the year after he turned pro. He won it again in 2000, and again in 2001. In 2003 he finished fourth here, his second-best tournament of the year. Well, he’s a San Diego boy, born and bred, and after years in the Phoenix area he’s living near here again in Rancho Santa Fe.

I’d met with Mickelson the day before, and he told me, “Torrey South is, honestly, the hardest golf course, day in and day, out that I’ve played. First of all, it’s so long — 7,600 yards is a long course anywhere, but at sea level it’s extremely long. A 7,600-yard course is for Denver, some place with altitude! Down here, the par-5s aren’t reachable, you have to hit mid to long irons into the par-4s, the greens are tough, it’s a grueling test of golf. And if the USGA keeps the greens firm, I think it will be one of the highest winning scores in U.S. Open history.”

Mickelson was referring to the 2008 U.S. Open, scheduled to be played on the course he has had such success on.

Surely he will already have won a major by then? I do some quick calculations: With four majors a year, that’s 17 more chances before Mickelson, now 33, plays the Open at Torrey Pines, which will conclude the day before his 38th birthday. Still young!

Harry Cooper

This particular morning, the mist rolling in from the nearby Pacific Ocean is thick, the pond in front of the 18th green barely visible. In my mind’s eye, the ghost of Harry Cooper appears. Cooper, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, was a dominant player on the PGA Tour, winning 30 times between 1925 and 1941, ranked the fourth-best player after Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, and Horton Smith. He had a splendid career in every way. The fly in the ointment was that while he came close on several occasions, he never won one of the four majors.

“The Best Player Never To Have Won a Major” is not a PGA Tour statistic, merely a label that’s passed around from player to player like a nasty game of Hot Potato. No one wants the handle, so along with the joy of victory in David Duval’s 2001 British Open Championship, or Jim Furyk’s 2003 U.S. Open title, comes the sigh of relief as the monkey hops off one’s back and the press looks around for the next victim. British great Colin Montgomerie has perhaps dragged the burden around the longest, and with his game appearing to fade somewhat, looks like a good candidate to join Harry Cooper.

Now the reluctant nominee is Mickelson, who is, without question, one of the dominant players on the PGA Tour. He is fourth on the all-time career money list with $23,773,106. He has won 21 times. Other than Tom Watson, among active players that number is surpassed only by a certain Mr. Woods. (As soon as the two mark 15 years of membership on the tour, the 20-victory plateau will earn them lifetime exemptions, the only current Tour regulars so honored.)

There are probably 21 or more theories about why Mickelson hasn’t won a major, some charitable, some less so. Fans love Lefty’s gambling style of go-for-it play that has accounted for 17 top-10 performances in majors, although critics will point to that same quality as the foolhardy reason for his bridesmaid performances: four third-place finishes in the Masters, two seconds in the U.S. Open, a second and a third in the PGA Championship. (Only in the British Open has Mickelson failed to crack the top 10.)

But it was Cooper who said about winning, “First you’ve got to be good. But then you’ve got to be lucky.”

Phil watches Ernie Els blast off at the 2009 U.S. Open

It’s virtually inconceivable that Phil Mickelson will not win one of golf’s major tournaments. He’s too good. He’s too talented, too exciting, too competitive, too likable, and, in every other area of his life, too lucky, not to succeed in that regard as well. It may happen this April at the Masters. Or, as Cooper’s spirit can hauntingly attest, it may never happen, because golf is golf, a game Mickelson was virtually born to play.

Lefty isn’t a lefty. He bats right, throws right, signs autographs with his right hand. The only reason Philip Alfred Mickelson plays golf left-handed is that he began mirroring his father’s golf swing at the age of 18 months, and the imprinting stuck.

The family story is that by age three young Phil tried to tag along to the local public course for his dad’s weekend outing. When Phil was deemed too young, he ran away from home, sawed-off golf clubs in hand. After the aborted escape attempt, Dad did soon bring Phil out for his first round, and that was that.

Somewhere in the family archives is Phil’s first full scorecard, from age three, when at the par-3 Presidio Hills course in San Diego he shot a 144. The course became his second home.

“My parents used to drop me off there every day around eight in the morning and pick me up around six or seven that night,” Mickelson says. “I loved it, I just loved it.” He won his first trophy, for a putting contest, at five. By age seven he’d more than halved his first score at Presidio Hills. In the 1980s he began piling up the hardware for wins on the San Diego Junior circuit through high school. At Arizona State University, he won three NCAA Championships, three Nicklaus Awards as national college player of the year, and the 1990 U.S. Amateur.

Perhaps his most remarkable victory came in 1991, when he won his first PGA Tournament while still an amateur. But he didn’t turn pro immediately. “My parents ingrained in me that an education was important. And I thought the money I might make in a year and a half would be nominal over the course of a 20- to 30-year career, so I stayed in school.”

But shortly after his 1992 graduation with a degree in psychology, he made it official. He made seven out of 10 cuts, won $171,714, and met the love of his life, Amy McBride.

“We lived in the same apartment complex, and we started dating in February 1993.” It was a good month, because Mickelson also won his first tournament as a professional — the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines. He has won at least once every year on Tour since, except for 1999 and 2003. Yet 1999 was one of his most incredible years, what with the U.S. Open and the Ryder Cup victory at Brookline, Massachusetts.

Few fans can forget the ’99 Open. There was a question whether Mickelson was even going to finish the tournament, since Amy was about to give birth to the couple’s first child, and he planned to be there, U.S. Open or no. As it turned out, Payne Stewart won by a stroke over Mickelson. As the two walked off the green, Stewart clasped Mickelson’s face and spoke to him.

Statue of Payne Stewart's reaction to winning putt at Pinehurst

“At the time, I was obviously disappointed to have not won,” Mickelson says now. “But Amy went into labor the next day, and a couple of months later when Payne Stewart perished in the plane accident, I just kind of knew that it was the way it was supposed to be. Besides, if he had missed that final putt on 18 and we had gone into a playoff, I would have been called away anyway.”

Mickelson really wouldn’t have played in the playoff?

“I wouldn’t have played. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see my first child’s birth.”

And what did Stewart say to him?

“It wasn’t about golf at all,” Mickelson says. “You know, here he just wins the U.S. Open and he’s thinking about somebody else. He said, ‘Phil, you’re going to become a father, it’s the greatest thing in the world, I’m so happy for you and Amy.’ I just thought that was very impressive.”

Mickelson doesn’t drink or smoke. But everyone’s entitled to at least one vice. Mickelson’s is making the odd wager now and again. His biggest payoff was a pre-season football pool he went into with a group that included his mother-in-law, taking down some big bucks the year the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl. “My mother-in-law and I were on the phone with each other five, six, seven times every Sunday. But then, Amy’s parents are two of my favorite people in the world. It was just a lot of fun.”

Fun is important to Mickelson. Toward the end of the 2003 season, for example, Mickelson suited up with the minor league Toledo Mud Hens, took some batting practice, and waited to see if he might be offered a short-term contract to throw a few innings in a game. It didn’t happen, but some writers pounced on him about it.

“I don’t know why,” he says. “But if you live your life worried about what other people say, you won’t have any fun. And it was fun.”

It may have been more fun than he had on Tour in 2003. He finished 38th on the money list with $1,623,137, a position many pros would have been deliriously happy with. Mickelson wasn’t: “It was my worst [full] year on Tour; my previous worst was 28th on the money list in 1994.”

Mickelson’s problem was driving accuracy. He pounded the ball, averaging 306 yards off the tee with his driver, putting him in third in that statistic. But he landed the ball in the short grass only 49 percent of the time, ranking 189 out of 190. Even for an acknowledged short-game master like Mickelson, that makes the going tough.

“I hit it plenty far, but accuracy is the key,” he says. “I tried a little alteration in my swing in hopes of improving my accuracy, but it backfired; I actually went even more offline. But in the long run it helped me learn what works for me and what doesn’t, and it gets me looking forward to 2004.”

Another thing that usually doesn’t work for Mickelson is conservative play. If there’s a gamble to take, he probably will.

An intense Arnold Palmer at the 1960 Masters (Getty)

“There are plenty of times throughout a round that I don’t hit a driver or don’t shoot at a pin,” he says. “But for the most part I enjoy trying to make birdies, playing aggressively, the challenge of trying to hit good golf shots, and being creative with different shots — trying to hit a little fade to that pin tucked behind the bunker, or a high draw to get it stopped quickly on the green. I think that’s the challenge the game presents, and that’s what makes playing golf fun to me.”

Mickelson has some strong supporters in his camp regarding his style, like another hard-charging, gambling, risk-taking kind of guy named Arnold Palmer: “Arnold has come up to me a number of times and said, ‘Don’t change the way you play.’ He’s a great guy.”

Like Palmer, Mickelson is a pilot, having flown for nine years. His goal is to teach his children to fly. “When they get to be 10 or so, I’ll start taking them up with me, have them fly in the right seat, and teach them as we go.” Mickelson isn’t certified for the type of jets he takes to tournaments because his entourage is too big — the whole family travels together. “Sure, it gets a little hectic, flying twice a week 25 times a year. But the effort Amy and I put into keeping our family together is well worth it because we’re able to spend that time together.”

Phil and Amy

Mickelson and Amy, a few years his junior, married in 1996. With two daughters and a son (Amanda, Sophia, and Evan), planning is paramount. “We try to schedule about six months in advance, no easy trick trying to work a Tour schedule around doctors’ appointments for the kids and the like,” he says. “Amanda will be starting school pretty soon; I’m not quite sure what we’re going to do about that.”

Family strategy is one thing. Playing strategy is still aimed squarely at the majors. “I’ve found that I play the best in the majors when I play the week before, so I’ll do that to get in a good competitive frame of mind, using that week to practice and prepare,” he says. “If I’ve been at home for 10 or so days and tee off in a major, I’m a little stale, a little more nervous than normally.”

Mickelson, nervous?

“Bobby Jones used to say he couldn’t eat during competitions,” Mickelson says. “He’d be so nervous he would throw up before rounds, couldn’t sleep at night, he was just always unsettled. I’m not that bad. But those nerves are all right. When you lose that feeling, you lose your edge; you’re not mentally into it.”

Is Mickelson still into it?

“Absolutely,” he says. “I love it. I love the game even outside of the competition and the Tour. I’m going to play in a few days with my mom, sister, and dad in a little fundraiser for my brother’s golf program — Tim is the head golf coach at the University of San Diego. My sister, Tina, is a PGA class A pro, and she’ll be doing some commentary for The Golf Channel for their senior tour telecast this year. My favorite memories of playing golf as a kid are the times my dad would pick me up from school and we’d go play nine holes in the afternoon until dark.

“If I get a little tired of it, I just take some time off. And typically it only takes about seven to 10 days before I’m just itching to get out and play golf again.”

With just a little more luck, Mickelson will have one less itch to scratch. Which would have, of course, the added benefit of sending the ghost of Harry Cooper packing.

Phil lines up a putt at the 2009 U.S. Open

For more great stories on Augusta and the Masters by TheAPosition.com writers, click here.

This may have been on my mind when the invitation arrived to have breakfast with the President, not something that comes my way every day. So when the opportunity arose last May, I jumped at it.

It was also a chance to spend a night at the Fairmont Copley Plaza (right) in Boston. Stately since its opening in 1912, the Plaza still has an old-world elegance with contemporary panache.

The staff had thoughtfully anticipated my needs by stocking my room with a few Samuel Adams beers in a chilled bucket, but in any case I also wandered down to the plush Oak Bar (below left), where they still have the Engaging Martini on the menu for a mere $12,750. The drink–a mix of Finlandia vodka, dry Vermouth and ice in the form an engagement ring–is part of a romantic package that includes a stay at the hotel and an $11,000 credit at the onsite DePrisco Jewelers for a ring of one’s choice. I didn’t order one.

But I was pleased to find a small but reasonable selection of good craft beers from New England, IPAs from Smuttynose and Harpoon, and a Whale’s Tail Pale Ale from Cisco Brewers. Any one or all of these would have trumped the insipid choices recently hoisted at the White House, when President Barack Obama had his Beer Summit with Henry Louis Gates (center, below) and Sgt. James Crowley (left). (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

But I digress. I rose early the next morning and hastened down to the function room to mingle with the rest of the crowd before the President’s arrival. The hubbub soon died down as a security team led its way into the room, and Her Excellency Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland, was introduced. I’ve not been in the presence of a sitting President before, so this was fairly exciting.

The day was arranged by Tourism Ireland, in hopes that attending journalists would promote the cause, an effortless task in my case when suggesting that golf in Ireland is a desirable end. President McAleese spoke to the effort in any case, as is her task.

The office includes no executive or policy role, but the directly elected President does promise in the oath of office to, “…dedicate my abilities to the service and welfare of the people of Ireland.” That welfare took a hit in 2008, as North American tourism to Ireland, representing about a $1 billion market, declined 11 percent in the global economic downturn.

“It was a tough year, a very tough year,” said the 58-year-old McAleese at the breakfast, but then pointed out that for the second consecutive year Trip Advisor had selected Dublin as the friendliest city in the world, “and people tell us that there is a sense of an authentic welcome when visiting Ireland.”

McAleese is the eighth President of Ireland, then five years into her second and last seven-year term and, significantly, the first born in Belfast–Northern Ireland. Joe Byrne, the executive vice president for Tourism Ireland in North America, said, “We once welcomed people to south Ireland. Now it is to the entire island, an all-Ireland program. It’s been part of the peace process, and the President has played an enormous role in that regard.”

The President was in the U.S. for a variety of functions, including this year’s commencement address at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. In the past, at various golf course openings and dedications, she has cheerfully (seemingly) admitted to being a golf widow to her husband, a dentist by trade and also a Belfast native.

In June, a BBC News report suggested that Dr. Martin McAleese (at right in photo, behind his wife at a typical ribbon-cutting) has been quietly working for years behind the scenes to convince loyalists like Jackie McDonald of the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) to decommission its weapons.

Part of that work was said to have taken place during a round of golf at the K Club (site of the 2006 Ryder Cup matches), and going a long way to supporting my proposition.

On the fourth of July, the BBC also reported that the new U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Daniel M. Rooney (left), had officially presented his “letters of credence” to President McAleese the day before, while commenting that U.S. President Obama wanted to visit Ireland, and that “he definitely would plan it” when “things settle down,” a sufficiently vague time (and perhaps an equally vague hope).

Rooney, whose family hails from Newry, County Down, is perhaps better known here as the chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers, last year’s Super Bowl champs. But he was also one of the founders of the American-Ireland Funds.

As for Obama, he has multiple reasons to point Air Force One toward Ireland. Anyone who has heard the Corrigan Brothers song, “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama” (or seen it performed on YouTube), knows the President’s great great great grandfather was born in the Irish village of Moneygall. So Obama would simply be coming home, where it shouldn’t be too hard to find a good ale to drink, and maybe arrange a game with Dr. McAleese–all with an eye toward peace, a desirable end.

(Courtesy of eyehook.com)

As the Tiagra Woods scandal continues to unfold, what were the odds that Valentine’s Day and the beginning of the Chinese New Year would coincide this year, unleashing the Chinese Year of the Tiger?

Well, they weren’t that good.  This is only the fourth time the two annual events have matched up on the calendar since 1900, and it’s not going to happen again for 38 years.  There are 12 creatures in the Chinese New Year rota: February 14, 1915 began the Year of the Rabbit; February 14, 1934 the Year of the Dog, and February 14, 1953 the Year of the Snake.  The Year of the Dragon begins February 14, 2048, or the Chinese year 4747.

There’s surely a way to calculate when the Year of the Tiger will again commence on February 14, but we’ll all be sleeping with kings and counselors by then, so I’m not going to try.  And I’m not going to try to make a further joke out of the situation, either, since the Tiger sex saga is already wearying.

Personally, I’ve gone from astonishment about the scope of it all, to laughing savagely at the jokes, to a cynicism about the inevitable script to unfold: the public contrition and claim of rehabilitation, the successful return to competition and the gradual refolding to the public breast.

Okay, poor word choice there, but it does point to the one unpredictable, and potentially hilarious element of The Next Phase–the gallery following Tiger around.  It surely won’t be any smaller than the former hordes he attracted, but the potential commentary is intriguing to ponder.  What happens after some joker lets loose the first bellow of the old, “Get in the hole!”?

Depends on reactions to the inevitable script, I imagine.  There will be guffaws and snickers and possible torment for Tiger as every move he makes is freighted with double entendre, or such vocal louts will be stoned to death for their insensitivity to golf’s risen Phoenix.

The inevitable script also suggests that the broadcast media will go ostrich, and treat any such razzing like a streaker at the World Series–that is, ignore it, and pretend distasteful things never happen.

I could be wrong about that one, but time, as usual, will tell.  Meanwhile, Happy Valentine’s Day, and Happy New Year for 4709, the Year of the Tiger.

[Click here to see a review of "The Swinger" and here for a piece about playing with Tiger.]