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FARMERS INSURANCE OPEN

February 4, 2015

Phil Mickelson

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

PHIL MICKELSON

Q. What did you do after Friday?
PHIL MICKELSON: I came home.

Q. Did you work or?
PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, yeah, I practiced a little bit. So we'll see how it goes this week.

Q. What were the challenges on the South Course?
PHIL MICKELSON: I think the length is a challenge and the firmness of the greens is a challenge. I think that patience is going to be a big challenge, because when you tuck the pins here, every green repels from the outside to the center. So, every ball's working to the center of the green and it's very difficult to get it close to a lot of the tough pins. So, you have to be patient. You have to accept 30, 40 footers, that you just can't knock it too close, and you have to make some putts. I think that patience will be the key.

Q. Are the North greens any quicker?
PHIL MICKELSON: I haven't played the North, I don't know. I haven't played it in this week. I played it recently, but not in the last few days.

Q. Where are you right now?
PHIL MICKELSON: Where am I?

Q. Related to where you usually are in your game.
PHIL MICKELSON: I think that I -- I know where my game is, I don't feel the scores are reflecting it, but we'll see this week. I feel very good coming into the week, but I felt good going into the Humana and so forth. So I really don't know what the score's going to be, but I feel like the parts of my game, I'm not displeased at all. Certainly the first two weeks haven't gone the way I expected, but we'll see. We'll see about San Diego. I feel good.

Q. What's the progress on the North Course?
PHIL MICKELSON: Delayed. Delayed, delayed. It's a long process. But the bidding process, it was a difficult one, there were a bunch of line items that were thrown in late that drove the bidding significantly higher than what the North project was and is and it included things that were unrelated to the North. So, bids were significantly higher and now it's delayed.

Q. Do you still feel confident that the vision that you have for the North is going to be carried out?
PHIL MICKELSON: I think so. I think that the Mayor and everybody wants us to have this happen and I think that everybody's working hard to make it happen. But I don't have -- there's no answers right now. It's kind of in limbo, as far as I know.

Q. If Tiger came to you for short game help, A, would you help him, and B, what would you say?
PHIL MICKELSON: I think that Tiger's going to have the last laugh. I think that his, his short game, historically, is one of the best of all time. I think his golf game is probably the best of all time. I think the short game is, when you haven't played, it's the first thing to feel uncomfortable and the quickest thing to get back. I think that he's -- I don't think he's going to have any problems, I really don't. I think we all, myself included, have had stretches where we feel a little uncomfortable, we don't hit it solid, and usually it's just a small tweak. Because it's such a short swing that it's not a hard thing to fix. I just don't see that lasting more than a week or two.

Q. I don't know if you saw it though last week, I mean, it was pretty startling to see that out of him. Some of his struggles. He admitted today that it's taken awhile. I don't know as someone who is in those shoes, like yourself, how difficult that might be?
PHIL MICKELSON: It's happened to me a number of times where I have gone through spells where I had trouble getting, chipping the ball close, chipping it solid. But it comes back. It's not like it's a big concern. As long as he's healthy and as long as he can swing the club the way he's swinging it, with the speed he's swinging at, I think his game will come back pretty quickly.

Q. In your case, did you find it as a technical issue or a mental issue?
PHIL MICKELSON: Well, it starts out as a technical issue and then it creeps in and as a, for a lack of confidence, for me. That's what it did for me. But once you make the slight technical adjustment, the confidence comes back instantly.

Q. In regards to last week missing the cut, when you go home, as you said, I think that my game is better than what it's shown so far, with regards to score, what do you have to do, do you think, to change that or move that around to be able to score finally?
PHIL MICKELSON: Maybe just be a little more patient, not force the issue throughout the round. Last week was a week where it was actually tough to get to a lot of pins. The greens were new, you couldn't get the ball stopped very easily, so you had to be patient, play to the center of the green, work balls into pins, and I probably got a little bit jumpy, a little bit antsy and made some mistakes. But it's part of -- I'm not overly concerned. I think that I had a great off season. I think that I'm not going to put my stock into a week or two. We'll see how it goes this week and then I'll have some, a couple weeks over and I'll take it over to Florida and see. But this feels totally different to me than last year. Last year I didn't feel good about my game, I didn't feel good about how I was hitting it, my speed wasn't up, just didn't feel good. Now, I feel good. I feel like the parts are good and the last piece is, again, when you haven't played in a while and/or haven't played well in a while, it sometimes takes a few rounds, a few tournaments to get into the course management aspect, to play the rounds properly action, to be patient, to know when to attack, when not to. With the exception of the PGA last year, the parts weren't quite there. I feel like the parts are there, but now I just got to put it together.

Q. Fred was here today and he said asked about the Ryder Cup situation and he said the next captain should really be up to the players. Would Fred be a top of your list as a future captain?
PHIL MICKELSON: I think that when you look at who the next captain is going to be and you have to look in a big picture like over the course of the next 10 Ryder Cup, the next 20 years, as opposed to short-term. I think that's one of the things that the task force is really looking at is details on how to set a game plan so that there's continuity from Ryder Cup to Ryder Cup and you have great player development and leadership and that's consistent with each other. I think you have to look over a big picture, not just the next captain. But when you look at the next captain, you got to have somebody that's strong enough with, confident enough in who they are, to withstand the scrutiny that's going to come their way, thanks to somebody, and you have to -- you know, that was supposed to be a joke, but. (Laughter.) And you also have to have the ability to let your ego down and let a system that has worked in the past, that allows us to be more prepared, like the Zinger system in 2008, get a lot of the credit. So Fred is absolutely one of the guys that would fit that bill, that is able to let his ego go, let somebody else take the credit, but is willing to stand up and take the hits. Fred's that guy. There's a couple other guys that fit that mold, too. And that would really provide great leadership.

Q. Tiger's always talking about syncing his long game up with his short game. Is that a case with you, too? Is there that kind of relationship between the two?
PHIL MICKELSON: No, not for me, because there's a million ways -- in my view -- there's a million ways to swing a golf club. We have got guys like Jim Furyk's golf swing and Adam Scott's golf swing and they both have tremendous command of their game, their swing, their ball flight. And those are totally different swings. And you can swing it a million different ways and be effective. I think that you can putt a million different ways and be effective. But there's only one way to chip effectively. So regardless of how you swing the club, regardless of how you putt, there's only one way to chip, because the leading edge on a 60 degree wedge is coming into the ball first. And everything you do chipping is to get, keep the leading edge down. So, there's three or four fundamentals on chipping that everybody has to do to chip well. No matter who you are. And it has nothing to do with your swing.

Q. Have you been fired from a job?
PHIL MICKELSON: Yes, just recently, yeah.

Q. Do you think you and your brother are going to be okay?
PHIL MICKELSON: You know that's a joke, right? You knew that when I took that job it was like a short-term thing. He needs a real assistant coach and we knew that it would last until about the first week of January, which it did. Now he's got a really good assistant to help him out and somebody to give him a break on some of the day-to-day duties. But we had that setup just to help out with some recruiting.

Q. (No Microphone.)
PHIL MICKELSON: Not for me, no.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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