Ford came up with a nice marketing slogan in 2004 for its advertisements and commercials featuring Phil Mickelson.
"What will Phil do next?"
Little did they know the fun that golf writers and bloggers would be having with them three years later as Phil Mickelson, the subject of those ads, prepares to come out of hibernation this week in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.
Mickelson has done absolutely nothing in the public eye since he left the K Club in Ireland last September after contributing to another embarrassing Ryder Cup defeat for the Americans and headed for his home north of San Diego.
For those counting at home, other than his 0-4-1 performance in the Ryder Cup, Lefty missed the last nine tournaments of the 2006 PGA Tour season, the PGA Grand Slam of Golf after the season and the first two events this year.
Included in the events Mickelson skipped were the WGC-American Express Championship in England the week after the Ryder Cup, the season-ending Tour Championship (for the second consecutive year) and the season-opening Mercedes Championship (which he has not played since 2001).
The last time he played a PGA Tour event was the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone in August, and he has been pounded for it unmercifully in print and on the Internet.
Golf World reported that Callaway Golf didn't pay Mickelson the full $10 million called for in his contract because of his long layoff.
"Phil said he was not going to play ... four months, five months, seems like an eternity off," Stuart Appleby said diplomatically two weeks ago at Kapalua.
Of course, there are those who have said that Mickelson's heart was not in it the last six times he did play last year after his final-hole collapse in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.
Had he held on to win, Mickelson would have joined Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only players to win three consecutive legs of the modern Grand Slam.
Based on his play and mental state at the end of last year, he has already been written off in some quarters.
That would be a mistake, others say.
"He has too much talent not to recover, but who knows?" said noted analyst Peter Oosterhuis of CBS and the Golf Channel. "One would think that he would, but having not played at the end of the year, and having not played very well when he did, there are some questions he has to answer (in 2007)."
Mickelson, who will be 37 in June, seemingly is in the prime of his career and at an age where some of golf's great champions have played some of their best golf.
Other than a winless season in 2003, he has had multiple victories every season since another drought year in 1999, and he has claimed a major championship victory in each of the last three years.
"Phil wants '07 to start, erase the second half of '06 like it didn't happen and then start again," said Frank Nobilo of the Golf Channel. "There has been a hangover effect. It has to end soon. That's why I think he took off all the time at the end of '06 (to regroup and come back strong)."
Arnold Palmer had a similar meltdown in the final round of the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, where he blew a seven-stroke lead over Billy Casper and lost in a playoff the next day.
Palmer never won another major, but he doesn't think the same thing will happen to Mickelson.
"I don't have any question that Phil will bounce back," Palmer said. "If anything, it might be a powerful lesson for him. He's still young enough, and this will get him in a mindset that the next time it happens he'll know exactly what to do.
"Losing only made me more determined to win. I don't know many players who have won majors who haven't at some point had the same thing happen to them, whether it's Nicklaus, Player, Snead, Hogan. I've done it numerous times. Some guys I suppose never recover ... but I think Phil will."
Only those in Mickelson's inner circle know exactly what his mental state is because he has granted no interviews during his time off, but reportedly he has been working diligently with instructors Rick Smith and Dave Pelz.
Not only that, apparently Hefty Lefty has lost some weight, another sore spot his critics have jabbed at without mercy. Even Davis Love III, who saw Mickelson recently in Mexico, could not resist taking out the needle.
"There was a rumor of an In-and-Out Burger down there and a Krispy Kreme, but he came to check it out," Love joked. "No, we were working on a golf course project that we're both working on down there.
"... He looks good. I thought that he looked like — I've seen him a lot in the gym this year, and I think it's a shock to everybody to see Davis and Phil in the gym. But he certainly looks good. He doesn't look like he's been sitting around, for sure. He looks like he's been working."
The Bob Hope is a good place for Mickelson to start, since he won the tournament in 2002 and 2004, and no matter what physical condition he is in it should be easy to gauge his mental state fairly quickly.
That's because he always has been a fast starter.
"I don't know, he hasn't played for so long, but that never seemed to bother him, either," Love said.
Lefty needs that fast start to show he's not finished.
Coming up
PGA Tour: Bob Hope Chrysler Classic at the Classic Course in Palm Desert, Calif., the Palmer Course at PGA West in La Quinta, La Quinta Country Club and Bermuda Dunes Country Club, Wednesday through Sunday.
TV: Wednesday through Friday, 3-6 p.m. EST on the Golf Channel; Saturday and Sunday, 4-7 p.m. EST on the Golf Channel.
Last year: Chad Campbell claimed the third victory of his PGA Tour career by three strokes over Scott Verplank and Jesper Parnevik, who won the Bob Hope in 2000. Campbell, who finished second to David Toms the previous week in the Sony Open in Hawaii, shot 63 in the first round and led the only remaining 90-hole tournament on the circuit virtually from wire-to-wire.
Champions Tour: MasterCard Championship at Hualalai Resort Golf Club in Kaupulehu, Hawaii, Friday through Sunday.
TV: Friday, 6:30-9 p.m. EST on the Golf Channel; Saturday and Sunday, 7:30-10 p.m. EST on the Golf Channel.
Last year: Loren Roberts sank a 30-foot putt on the final hole to complete a course-record 61 and earn a one-stroke victory over Don Pooley. The 50-year-old Roberts posted a 25-under total of 191 to break the Champions Tour record in relation to par for a 54-hole event and tie the stroke mark. He also broke the Tour record for birdies in a three-round tournament with 26.
LPGA Tour: Women's World Cup of Golf at Gary Player Country Club at Sun City Resort in Sun City, South Africa, Friday through Sunday.
TV: Friday, 12:30-3 p.m. EST on the Golf Channel, Saturday and Sunday, 1-4 p.m. EDT on the Golf Channel.
Last year: Annika Sorenstam, who was teamed with Liselotte Neumann, made an eagle on the 14th hole in the final round and powered Sweden to a three-stroke victory over Catriona Matthew and Janice Moodie of Scotland. Becky Brewerton and Becky Morgan of Wales finished another stroke back in third place, and the United States team of Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis was fourth yet another stroke behind.
Notes and quotes
Tiger Woods was selected by the Golf Writers Association of America to receive the Charlie Bartlett Award.
The award, named for the first secretary of the GWAA, is given to a professional golfer for unselfish contributions to the betterment of society. Woods will be honored at the GWAA Annual Awards Dinner on April 4 in Augusta, Ga.
More than 10 million youngsters have been involved in the Tiger Woods Foundation in its 10 years of existence, and more than $30 million in grants has been dispersed by the organization.
Woods created the foundation with his late father, Earl, in 1996.
"I'm proud of the work my foundation has accomplished and I'm honored the GWAA has chosen to celebrate the 10 million young lives we've changed for the better," Woods said.
"Receiving the Charlie Bartlett Award is a great honor, and I'm grateful for this support and recognition."
The Tiger Woods Learning Center, which opened Feb. 10, 2006, is the crowning achievement of the foundation. The 35,000-square-foot education center offers students in grades 5-12 programs and career explorations in several varied fields.
Woods plans to open more centers around the nation and the world.
The Tiger Woods Foundation also has partnered with Target Stores in 2000 to create Start Something, a free program for youths 8-17. More than 3.8 million have enrolled in the program, which helps students define personal goals.
The TWF Grants Program supports an average of 100 charities and non-profit organizations with $6 million in grants, while the TWF Youth Clinics have reached more than 500,000 young people.
BMW, which has sponsored golf around the world for several years, entered into a six-year agreement the PGA Tour and the Western Golf Association.
The inaugural BMW Championship USA will be played for the first time Sept. 6-9, 2007, at Cog Hill Golf Club in Lemont, Ill. It will be the third of four playoff events leading to the Tour Championship as part of the new FedEx Cup points race.
"Globally, BMW has aligned itself with the premier performance-driven sports," said Jan-Christian Koenders, director of BMW Brand Communications. "Just as the America's Cup and Formula 1 represent the pinnacle in their respective arenas, the U.S. golf market is the largest in the world.
"For more than 20 years, BMW has been involved in international golf. Golf represents excellence, precision, aesthetic appeal and a cultivated lifestyle. This new partnership agreement exemplifies BMW's ongoing commitment to the advancement and legacy of the sport."
Starting in 2008, the BMW Championship USA will travel to some of the premier golf courses in the Midwest every other year. The championship will be played in St. Louis at Bellerive Country Club in 2008, then return to Chicago in 2009 and every second year thereafter. The tournament will be played at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., in 2010.
The BMW Championship at Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, is one of the top tournaments on the PGA European Tour, and the BMW Asian Open in Shanghai is played on the Asian PGA Tour.
Maureen Esther Orcutt, who was a top amateur golfer more than half a century ago and later became a sportswriter for the New York Times, died in Durham, N.C., at the age of 99.
Orcutt, born on April 1, 1907, in New York City, won 65 major amateur events and was runner-up in the U.S. Women's Amateur Championship in 1927 and 1936. She won the Canadian Women's Amateur title twice and won the U.S. Senior Women's Amateur Championship in 1962 and 1966.
She played in the first four Curtis Cup matches, which pits the best U.S. women amateurs against their counterparts from Great Britain every two years, from 1932 to 1938.
Since there was no women's professional tour when Orcutt played — the LPGA Tour was founded in 1950 — she often played high-profile exhibitions against men and women.
Orcutt once beat Babe Didriksen Zaharias in an exhibition, and the defeat upset Zaharias so much that she left without paying off a $10 bet.
In another exhibition, Orcutt played as a partner with the great Walter Hagen, at Augusta. Hagen was not thrilled to be paired with a woman, until he saw Orcutt play.
"I didn't say anything," she later recalled. "But the next day, I carried Hagen for nine holes and we won."
Orcutt's father, Benjamin Sinclair Orcutt, was assistant Sunday editor of the New York Times, and her mother, Elizabeth Kelly Orcutt, was a prominent golfer.
In 1937, Orcutt began writing a column called "Women in Sports" and covering golf for the Times and, for many years, she was the only woman in the sports department. She later wrote for the New York Evening World, Golf Illustrated and the National Golf Review.
She had no immediate survivors.
Padraig Harrington, the No. 1 player on the PGA European Tour, has been selected Ireland's Professional Golfer of the Year for 2006 by the Irish Golf Writers Association.
The native of Dublin, who won the award for the fifth time, captured the European Tour Order of Merit for the first time in his career in a close race with Paul Casey of England.
A key member of the European team's Ryder Cup rout of the United States at the K Club in Ireland, Harrington won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St. Andrews and beat Tiger Woods in a playoff to win the Dunlop Phoenix tournament in Japan late in the year.
Rory McIlroy, 17, of Holywood, Northern Ireland, who won the European Amateur Championship, the West of Ireland and Irish Close titles, was selected Irish Amateur Golf of the Year — an award Harrington claimed in 1995.
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