GOLF CHANNEL SHOW

March 1, 2004

Phil Mickelson

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, I still don't like talking about it. But I think the most important thing is that Amy is a hundred percent, our baby is a hundred percent, no aftereffects. And now that everybody is doing well, we're just kind of looking forward to this year. And I think that's why we're so excited, is that everybody is healthy. I feel like my game's back on track, headed in the right direction. We just want to make this a great year. It's also the last year we're going to be able to have my family travel with me. My oldest child Amanda will be starting school soon and we'll have to stay at home a lot more to let her be in school.

PHIL MICKELSON: Oh, yeah.

PHIL MICKELSON: Those statistics didn't bother me. It didn't bother me I was 38th on the list, it didn't bother me I was sliding in the world ranking. What bothered me was that I was playing poorly. What bothered me was that I didn't have confidence I could drive in the fairway, I didn't have confidence from 150 in, my birdies were going way down per round, my bogeys and mistakes were going up. That's what ultimately bothered me. And it wasn't until the start of '04 that I really tried to fix it. We spent November, December trying to develop a game plan. I didn't touch a club. I worked on chipping and putting only. I worked out a lot. And from January 1, Rick Smith flew out. That's when I started spending time with him. I didn't want to waste any more time, just looked forward to this year.

PHIL MICKELSON: How nice, thank you. Let's rehash it.

PHIL MICKELSON: Sure. You just shouldn't talk about other players, other things. It was a bad area to go into. I was so excited at the time about how far I was hitting that new X Ball that I was playing. And now I've actually gone back to the Pro V1 to help my distance control from 150 yards in, and I'm driving it 18 yards shorter. So I can't fly it past him anymore, nor do I really care to. I'd much rather just get it in and play and try to work from 150 in and see if I can win tournaments that way.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, in all honesty, there really isn't. I haven't played any different this year than I would last year. Now, I know a lot has been written about how I have a 1-iron, I'm just trying to get it in play more. A lot of that is true, but I only used the 1-iron I think in one tournament, the Bob Hope, where it seemed to fit. I'll probably use it at just a few more events throughout the year where it fits, where it's windy. I may use it here at Doral. But for the most part, I still want to drive it and get it inside 150 yards. Dave Pells has explained it perfectly to me. Listen, when I hit from 90 yards, my misses are going to be much better than 120 yards. And from 120 yards, they're going to be much better than 150. So the closer I can get to the hole, the closer my circle is around the pin. So if I can hit driver, I want to hit driver because I have a better chance at leaving myself a birdie putt.

PHIL MICKELSON: That's true.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, but it was true. It sucks to admit it, but last year from 130 in, it was my worst year. This year it's a tremendous turnaround. It's been much different. A lot of it's been just stressing that area. And also I really didn't spend the proper time last year, I was so worried about some of the areas of my golf swing, trying to change things to get better, that it kind of backfired.

PHIL MICKELSON: Wins the Masters, by the way. Only second left-handed person to win a major besides Bob Charles.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, that, too, but I only see it from the left-hand perspective.

PHIL MICKELSON: A lot of left-handers are playing well.

PHIL MICKELSON: Mike Weir, a bunch of other good ones.

PHIL MICKELSON: See, I think it's cool. I pulled for other left-handed players because I know what it was like growing up without proper equipment. And now that we're having such success with a number of left-handed players, we're seeing manufacturers develop the top-of-the-line equipment, left-handed at the same time as right-handed. And granted, with Titleist, we're a little bit fortunate that the CEO happens to be left-handed as well.

PHIL MICKELSON: That's correct. I was very fortunate. When I came to Titleist in the end of 2000, 2001, Wally Uihlein let me develop my own set of clubs. So I hand-did each set of clubs on the computer, went through the whole process. And it was just supposed to be for me. But we thought, hey, let's do a dry run. And we ended up making a thousand or two sets, two thousand sets. We sold right through those. We had demand for a lot more. We only made it left-handed only. We sold about 10 thousand sets. Now left-hand only, that's pretty cool. But it's a nice set of a muscle back short iron that progresses into a cavity back, which for me, the short-irons, I need to get at little bit more turn in the ball to get to some of those tucked pins. The longer irons I want to fly a little bit straighter. What's really cool is from a left-handed point of view, we say to people, "Where can I get those?" We say, "Oh, no, no, you can't. It's left hand only." Never been able to say that.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, it's good fun.

PHIL MICKELSON: Oh, I'm not going to go there. You know, that's not for me to go. I think Mike's a great guy. Not only is he a great player, he's a great person. He's got a wonderful family. He's ranked higher than me in the world ranking right now. So I can't talk any smack right now.

PHIL MICKELSON: Sure.

PHIL MICKELSON: You know, I don't worry about it, Vince. I lived a charmed life, major or no major. I've got the greatest wife in the world. I've got three wonderful kids. I've got business relationships that are just tremendous. When I decide to do the Warrior Fund, I got a call from Bearing Point, from Ford, Chuck and Helen Schwab, they said, "Listen, we love this, we want to match it." To be involved with people and companies like that, those type of relationships mean everything to me, major or no major. Now, with that being said, obviously I'd love to win a major. I'm striving for it, I'm working hard for it. I get to play golf for a living, what most people do on vacation. I just have an unbelievably fun, enjoyable life. And I'm not going to let the fact I haven't won a major ruin it or be a huge negative. But I also love the challenge of trying to get there. It's a tough road. We've got some great players. I love trying to beat Tiger in a major. It's tough as heck. And we got another, you know, a bunch of other great players with Davis Love, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh playing tremendous, Mike Weir now playing so well, Jim Furyk winning The Open last year. There's so many great players stepping up that it's just a fun challenge to try to break through. And I think that this off-season, I've developed a game plan that should help get me there a lot quicker.

PHIL MICKELSON: Maybe it's a compliment.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, you saw those 15-, 20-foot putts going in on the last hole to beat me by a shot. That's a big reason why.

PHIL MICKELSON: The other thing is I have not led after 54 holes in a major. That's one thing I'm going to try to work on this year. If I can get in the lead, that's much better than trying to pick up four or five shots on Tiger at Bethpage. That's a heck of a task in one round. Best player in the world, five shots, come on.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yes, I've had some poor executions and hit some bad shots that I wouldn't necessarily do any different. Just a few days ago, I was playing Davis Love in a match, and we were tied going to the last hole. I had a great opportunity to win. I had a 3-wood to the front of the green. If I knock it on and made birdie, I most likely win. He's 170 yards in two. And I hooked it, it hit a cart path, went behind a tree, and hit a couple of bad wedges, made bogey and lost. That's poor execution. The decision making was fine. And in the past, I've been questioned for some of my decision making. But the fact is, is that I'm trying to win tournaments, and that's how I've been able to win 22 times. If I'm not trying those shots, I'm not going to win. And yet if I don't execute, then it's bad management.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, that's different because that's such a team sport. You rely solely on your teammates. Whereas golf, it's an individual sport, and you have nobody else to blame but yourself. But on that same token, I can't control what the other players do. I can only control what I do. And if guys make putts in the last hole to beat me by a shot, so be it. There's not much I can do than play better over the 71 holes previously.

PHIL MICKELSON: Vince, I just don't -- it's hard for me to even address that because I've got so many more years of playing, and I just don't see that as being something I'll have to face. Maybe it will, but I just don't realistically see that happening. I just feel like I'm playing too well. I've got a path and direction now that should give me an opportunity to win a number of them, not just one.

PHIL MICKELSON: It's your show, Vince. I'm just a part of it.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, I took a lot of hits last year for playing baseball. I mean, what guy wouldn't love to go spend two or three days with a professional team and take batting practice, throw batting practice? It was a lot of fun. I had a tough year last year, not playing well. The majors were done, were threw, my season was basically over for the most part. And I went out and spent a couple of days. It was a great way to get my mind off golf, and yet I took a lot of hits for it, which to me, I just don't fathom. Life is about doing fun things, having fun, enjoying life. This opportunity came to hang out for a couple days, and I took. At the PGA Championship, I went out to the Buffalo Bills training camp, which was cool, threw the football with the guy and had fun. Ford took that and said, "Let's do something off this. What will Ford and Phil do next?" So we modeled the Ford GT, which is an awesome car, oh, man, and the Expedition with its flip-down rear seat capability, then we have me singing with Toby Keith, me represents the Ford.

PHIL MICKELSON: We're not supposed to announce it till tomorrow.

PHIL MICKELSON: The Golf Channel's got some pull.

(Clip shown.)

PHIL MICKELSON: I never claimed I could sing.

PHIL MICKELSON: They need to watch out because Josh Grayson, another country singer, myself, whose contracts are piling in. Then we have another one with Wayne Gretzky playing hockey, which is fun, too.

PHIL MICKELSON: You have that one, too?

PHIL MICKELSON: We all have our Al Bundy stories. Four touchdowns, single game, Polk High. We all have our Al Bundy stories. My Al Bundy story is back in little league days I pitched a no-hitter against a team that had Eric Karros on it. That's my Al Bundy story.

PHIL MICKELSON: Still reliving it.

PHIL MICKELSON: Still reliving it. 33.

PHIL MICKELSON: From what I've seen, I've seen a number of really good athletes. I've seen a lot of guys very good at hockey, which I never grew up with. I couldn't play at all. You can kind of tell from the Gretzky clip you'll see in a few weeks. But I've seen some really good athletes. You know, Tiger is an incredible athlete, in other areas, although he struggled with me at ping-pong. But Brad Faxon is an incredible ping-pong player. You know, Hale Irwin used to be a great defensive back, University of Colorado. I think there's a lot of hand-eye coordination that's needed in golf. Consequently a lot of guys are pretty good athletes.

PHIL MICKELSON: I grew up playing. I was quarterback till I broke my arm way back in the day. I had to have surgery, and they cut open my elbow and so forth. So I stopped playing that. But I've just always enjoyed throwing. My dad would throw with me when I was a kid. We'd play catch with a baseball. He put a mound in our backyard. He used to manage my little league team. I used to play a little bit of football growing up. It's just fun.

PHIL MICKELSON: She is. In fact, she was on the Senior Olympics Basketball team the last couple years that's won the gold medal in the United States, which is pretty cool.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, we're very fortunate. I mean, if somebody out here is doing drugs, they're not going to be on the leaderboard. For the most part, everybody out on tour is at least high school and many times fully college educated. Guys are well-spoken. You don't have problems that a lot of the other sports have. The other thing is our tour, our commissioner, has had some great leadership in pacing our growth. The last three years the market has been very tough for corporate America, which affects us. But because of the pacing that he has set forth and putting cash away, other investments, he's grown the tour at a very steady 10 to 15, 20% rate. So we were able to withstand the downturn. And now that things are starting to recover, it's a very good time for the PGA TOUR. Last year, last week, at the Accenture Match Play, we had a $7 million purse. Ford Championship, we're at $5 million plus, plus a GT for the winner. So the purses are just starting to really thrive. And we don't have that high price of mediocrity that other teams have in professional athletics because if you don't perform well, you don't get paid.

PHIL MICKELSON: I didn't do a thing this year. I had so many other things going on that I was trying to reverse. I haven't really spent any time with football this year.

PHIL MICKELSON: I only watched the last quarter, which turned out to be the best time to watch it. It was pretty nice.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, back in the junior golf days, I would wear a watch because a couple of players that I would compete with would have swings that if I watched, it would throw my timing off. So I would just watch my watch. And I've been wearing one ever since. Now, I'm fortunate enough to have a representation deal with Rolex. They have a line of Cellini, hence the name. I don't know if it was named after you or not. They have a line of Cellini watches that are much thinner and don't annoy me, whereas this is a much thicker watch.

PHIL MICKELSON: Is that a Rolex Cellini there?

PHIL MICKELSON: You don't want to have your name on the watch. It's a little showy.

PHIL MICKELSON: Like those trick shots and so forth you were talking about?

PHIL MICKELSON: I enjoy having fun. And part of the fun for me on the golf course is to try and challenge myself with different or creative shots. And I learned a lot of those backward shots and weird shots in my backyard growing up because the same chip shot over and over would wear on me, get tiresome, and I would go behind the trees, off the edge of bunker, so forth. That's where I learned a lot of the trick stuff. But what I've needed to do is basically start playing the percentages, be more mathematical. How many times will I pull it off? What's the penalty? Is it a one-shot penalty, two-shot penalty or even a half-a-shot penalty if I can possibly get up and down and start playing the percentages better, which is I think why this year I've been able to be in contention a little bit more by not maybe taking the chance or two that I don't need to.

PHIL MICKELSON: I know what you're saying. What I've been trying to do is become a player that's very effective from 150 in. So instead of trying a shot at 250 yards, I'll try a shot from 150 yards in that I feel I can get close. As we get out, the misses start to get larger, get away from the hole. So from 150 I want to redefine myself as a player who can get it close from anywhere, different lies, different conditions, so forth. That's what I've been really working on hard this year.

PHIL MICKELSON: It's won me some tournaments in the past, but it's also cost me a few tournaments, too. And I think those are the ones that seem to be looked at with scrutiny as opposed to which ones of the 22 it's actually helped me win.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, I'm trying. I'm certainly trying. What I've actually done is spent a lot more time on the basic chips, not the ridiculous ones from behind the trees, from out of the rough, but just the basic chips, because those are the ones that I've got to get up and down. And the difference between having a two-footer and a three-footer is astronomical. Those 12 inches make a big difference on the percentage of putts made. So I'm really trying to get the basic chip down to inside two feet, which is a putt I know I'm going to make a hundred percent of the time.

PHIL MICKELSON: I've heard of a broken window or two, sure.

PHIL MICKELSON: I enjoy reading and learning about that stuff. I enjoy reading about how if you travel the speed of light, the aging process ceases at a 50-to-1 ratio. I think that stuff is fascinating. I think ultimately our solar system, the sun, our star, will expand and ungulf the earth. Right now what I think is happening with this Mars exploration, I think we're trying to establish life there. We're trying to find life forms on earth that can withstand 120 plus degree temperature heat, as well as extremely cold temperatures, and put plants on Mars in what we call terraform it so that we can ultimately live there. After that, we will plant some trees and develop some type of oxygen and atmosphere and be able to live there 100, 200 years from now. I think that would be really cool, and something we should look for as our population increases at this fast rate.

PHIL MICKELSON: Steven Hawking is great reading, I think. It's really fascinating stuff.

PHIL MICKELSON: Okay. Ask me anything.

PHIL MICKELSON: Oh, about me?

PHIL MICKELSON: Okay.

PHIL MICKELSON: They used to call me the Roman. I don't know why. Not like I lived a couple hundred years ago. They used to call me that.

PHIL MICKELSON: We had a couple of those. I think that was it.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah.

PHIL MICKELSON: I used to wear a football helmet because I used to run into all the corners. I was actually five or six at the time. I remember wearing it, and somebody asked me mom, "Why is he wearing that?" I come running around the corner, bang, right into the corner, fall down. He said, "Oh, I get it."

PHIL MICKELSON: It wasn't bad. Shoot, we always wanted to wear a football helmet when we were a kid. Now I just had to.

PHIL MICKELSON: Her gymnastics class, yeah, when she was a kid. I used to watch her. She was really good. She was a really good gymnast as a child.

PHIL MICKELSON: Cartwheels, splits, summersaults that was all me, Vince. Are you kidding me? No way.

PHIL MICKELSON: I told him on an airplane. I left him a note on a napkin, I think, or something.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, something like that. We were both flying back to the AJJ Awards.

PHIL MICKELSON: The Jersey. The Superman was actually the first one. But I did The Jersey shortly thereafter.

PHIL MICKELSON: And Amy and I went on a trip to Italy. And we go up to our hotel room. We just got there, coming back from the airport. Turn on the TV, and it's my mug on TV in The Jersey speaking Italian, saying, "Ciao." I got a real kick out of that.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, my dad -- first full set or my first golf clubs?

PHIL MICKELSON: First full set was a set of ladies clubs that we found on a drive back from a family trip. And I had won a set of clubs because I finished second in this tournament as a junior that gave a trophy. First and second got a trophy. If I win the trophy, I get a full set of clubs. So we find these ladies set. They were $75. My dad cut them down and fixed them up. Probably a good set because the shaft was real week, and it worked out well. But I was expecting, a nice shiny new Wilson Staff Blades at the time because those were the bomb back in the '70s.

PHIL MICKELSON: All right.

PHIL MICKELSON: I had a bunch of golf balls and my clubs, and I had a blank -- you caught me, I had my two little security -- I had a security blanket and my little stuffed animal called Flopsy.

PHIL MICKELSON: I wouldn't go without him.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, The Jersey, I said Jersey.

PHIL MICKELSON: Wish you were my teacher back in high school.

PHIL MICKELSON: We have him framed.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah.

PHIL MICKELSON: That's such a good color on you. Brings out the colors in your eyes.

PHIL MICKELSON: Beautiful.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, that's great. Oh, it's just great. She went over to the dark side.

PHIL MICKELSON: I really enjoyed watching her. I think she's done a great job on The Championships Tour. It's not easy commentating, it's really not. But I think she's done a good job. I know that she was saying how she did this and that the first week. Gosh, you know, everybody's going to make mistakes. You're on air for so many hours. But I think she's doing a great job. I'm proud of her.

PHIL MICKELSON: Golf for us was a reward. We were never forced to play. In fact, it was used as punishment if we didn't do our chores or didn't do well in school. They would take our clubs away. I remember I couldn't play in some tournaments because I did something. My sister, she was not -- Tina was not really into golf at such a young age. She started to really develop a desire for it later on. My brother Tim, same thing. He instead of starting when he was a couple years old, he started when he was seven or eight. And he's turned into an excellent player. He's now coaching at University of San Diego. It's been a big part of our whole family.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, Vince, it's interesting. I just think there's so many great things in life to do, so many great opportunities, and I love playing golf, and I really committed myself for the next seven years. I know that till I'm 40, I'm going to play competitive and try to play the best I can. And over the next seven years, that will really determine how my career is looked at. Those next seven, as well as the first 10. After I get 40, if I win a tournament here or there, or even majors, it won't really be looked at or alter the way my career has been looked at. Now, I'll probably play longer than that, I'm guessing. But when I'm 40, I'll relook at it because I'd like to spend time with my kids as they are doing sporting events, so forth. And I'm very fortunate to be able to be in that position to do so.

PHIL MICKELSON: Thank you.

PHIL MICKELSON: I enjoyed it. All but the Flopsy part.

PHIL MICKELSON: My pleasure.