DORAL-RYDER OPEN

March 5, 1997

Phil Mickelson

PHIL MICKELSON: I think that it's -- well, it's definitely a little bit more difficult. The challenge is in a couple of areas. (1) there's four or five holes now where you need to think a little bit more because of the shaved areas and just play those a little bit smarter, you can't be quite as aggressive, maybe. But, the real difficulty is coming with the added bunkers and the softness of the sand in those bunkers. Every shot is plugging and, because of that, it's very difficult to get it out and keep it on the green because you can't put any spin on it. So, that's where the -- a lot of the difficulty lies, I think.

PHIL MICKELSON: I like most of them, yeah. I mean, I like the changes, because I always -- I'd rather see five or six in a tournament than 20. There's only one change I thought might have made it even easier is on 18, the bunker on the left. I thought the rough was tougher than a bunker shot, you know, by the water, just past the water. That was the only one I thought was maybe easier. He might have done that now because the green is so severe and it's such a tough shot around the green, maybe he wanted you to have an opportunity to go at the green. The 18th green is the toughest. You get in that back bunker and the water is really in play.

PHIL MICKELSON: I really didn't. But, I've worked on my putting and the last couple of weeks, starting in Tucson, which was my last tournament, I've putted better than I have in a long time, in years. And I've really started to roll the ball well and on-line. And, the last ingredient is reading the greens properly. There was a long time where the ball just wasn't starting on-line consistently, but I've gotten to the point where I've tried to roll the ball more effectively. And, it just seems like it's coming off the face more consistently and on-line. So, my confidence level is up putting-wise. And, the last ingredient there is just reading them right. And, the greens here have just a little subtlety to them, an inch or two one way or another on a lot of the flat, level putts. And it's important to read that inch right, because it will just take it just enough to miss the putt.

PHIL MICKELSON: I'm getting a little more used to it, now that I've been out here quite a while -- not quite a while, but five or six years, I guess. But, it's still very difficult to read grain in greens. And, these greens are so fast, I just don't see how the grain of the grass can really affect the break, because it's mode down so low. But, yet, it will have just enough, just enough effect.

PHIL MICKELSON: I think there still is a huge advantage if someone could hit it long. In fact, there is. There flat out is. There's a lot of bunker carries between 270 and 285. And, if you can carry it that distance, which is a long carry. But, if you can do it, it opens up a lot of the fairways. And the par 5s obviously are reachable; even the 12th hole because of the prevailing wind is downwind, is oftentimes reachable, at least the front bunker, is not a problem, it's tough to carry it on that thing. Having length is a huge factor on 1, 8 and 10, because 10 is reachable for a lot of guys, too. But, the main thing is the fairways open up, if you can carry 270 to 285.

PHIL MICKELSON: Depends on the wind.

PHIL MICKELSON: A little bit.

PHIL MICKELSON: Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll try to, sure. In fact, I carry two drivers with me. One that goes a little lower. And, one that goes a little higher. And there's reason to use both here.

PHIL MICKELSON: There's reason to use one or the other. Obviously, it's windy here, so it would be advantageous to keep it down on a lot of holes, but it's more important to carry the ball. And, because of that, I have a higher, further carrying driver; not as much roll, because I'm trying to carry the ball 270 or 285.

PHIL MICKELSON: Oh, yeah, sure. They're the same club; just a little less loft and lower launch angle.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, the biggest difference is the speed of the greens. And putting a green that rolls 12 or 13 on the stimp meter is not a green that a regular -- that the average playing can relate to, because you just don't see that speed. In fact, you don't see that speed at Augusta in regular playing days. When they get those greens as hard and as fast as they get, putting those greens under major championship conditions and needing to make 4- or 5-footers is different than putting a 4- or 5-footer in being in contention at another TOUR event with the TOUR speed greens. These greens are very quick, but Augusta's are really a step or two above; even more so in that they get hard, really hard and there's just nothing - no resistance to the ball; not to mention the undulation. I'm talking about just a flat putt. When you throw the contouring in, there it's a huge difference. And, I think that's the major difference because there's no place we can go to practice that. You can't find a course anywhere to work on it. Make Oakmont is the only one I heard that keeps their greens at that type of pace.

PHIL MICKELSON: It's actually -- I feel like it's been the best it has been -- I feel it's the best it's been, physically, as far as ball-striking and putting and chipping. The area that's lacked, that I've lacked at the start of this year has been, I want to say -- I guess not really course management, but I've hit some dumb shots, so it might be a mental focus on each shot, per say. I've made a double bogey just about every round, which is ridiculous. And that's been the area that I've lacked. I made more birdies than anybody in Tucson, but I also made more mistakes than just about anybody there, too. But that was encouraging that I'm starting to get the ball in the hole a little bit there.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, I would have liked to have gotten off to a better start, but I also found that I wasn't quite as -- I was a little bit more motivated to play over here, play well over here because I haven't played well in Florida, really. I mean, I just haven't. And yet I've played so well on the west coast that my desire at the start of the year was to play well in Florida, so I might not have gotten as focused as I needed to be at the start of the year.

PHIL MICKELSON: This tournament seems to be one of the strongest fields we play throughout the year. And it's kind of the first international field or the first real difficult field that kind of prepares you for the majors. Here and THE PLAYERS Championship just seem to have excellent players here, the best players on the TOUR normally come. There are a couple of exceptions, obviously, but for the most part. And THE PLAYERS Championship seems to have everybody in the top - I don't know - 125 on the U.S. list, but a lot of international players, as well. So my point is, here is really the first difficult, full field we played, I would say.

PHIL MICKELSON: I am, yeah.

PHIL MICKELSON: I'll go home and then I'll come back for Bay Hill and THE PLAYERS.

PHIL MICKELSON: I really haven't. I took two and a half months off in the off-season, ten weeks and I just -- I didn't do that. I just kind of wanted to play a little bit more, and play some tournaments that I haven't played in a while. I am going to try to cut back on the overseas' appearances - not that I've gone that much, but cut back a little bit there and cut back a little bit maybe on some outings, and, I really haven't done that many in the first place, with the idea being when somebody looks back on your career, they don't really look at how you did in the such and such Pro Am or the such and such overseas' event. They look at how many TOUR events and how many majors you've won, and that sort of establishes your career. It's difficult for me to get excited about an event when it's not going to have any bearing on me as a player.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, 3, because there's so much demand on shots, I think it's important to take a 3 or 4-iron off the tee, where you have a wide open fairway and not a crucial drive. But, after 1 and 2, after two crucial drives, you really need to hit in the right spot there. And, it's not a very wide fairway, even though it appears to be, you have to hit it through a 10-yard gap on 2 if you get it down the hill and not go in the hazard or bunker. 3, it's important to relax off the tee, take an iron, and have an 8-iron in. And, that's a hole where you need to be smart on when to be aggressive. They're going to put that pin along that front edge, and if you come up short, you go 50 yards down the swale. Well, you need to be intelligent on that shot. Obviously, when the pin is left and the green is pitching away from you, you have to vary. Do I want to have a 35- or 40-footer downhill or do I want to have a 20-foot chip back uphill. So, you have to kind of weigh that as an option. You need to be smart on that shot. 4 is a hole where I just try and hit the lower section of the green, just have an uphill putt at it. I'm not thinking about hitting it to the back tier that much. And it's just a 4-iron roughly. And then 5 is a hole where you can just let it eat off the tee and there's not much out there. You just want to hit a bomb and have as little end to that green as possible, because you need to fly it off of the tee and get it to stop. Last year I hit a good tee shot an L-wedge in, but that green was so hard that I landed that L-wedge a couple of feet from the hole and it bounded clear over the green in one bounce. So sometimes it doesn't really matter how far down you get it. But I've yet to try to bump-and-run it up that slope. The way I play it is to fly it up on top to try to get it to stop.

PHIL MICKELSON: How are you aware of that? I have, yes.

PHIL MICKELSON: I added a little loft to my putter, and we were talking about how I feel a lot more confident and so forth. I would kind of -- because I put my hands forward, most people have three or four degrees of loft on their putter, and that's what I end up having now. I have about 7 to 8. And because of that, I do have about 3 degrees at impact, which is what everybody else has, but I just set my hand a little further ahead. But what I would do is because I had so little loft, I would have to ease into it, because the ball would just jet, just fly off the face. And now I've been able to make an aggressive stroke and not have the ball shoot off the face.

PHIL MICKELSON: It wasn't that big a secret. We went to Hawaii and we got married there at the Grand Wailea.

PHIL MICKELSON: Amy flew over there -- my wife flew over there with her mom and sister and picked out a place. It was a small little chapel. It only held about 50, 60 people. So there really wasn't -- we weren't able to have that big a wedding. And then we ended up going to another island and got a little bungalow for our honeymoon. We were talking about going to some of the other islands and I heard a horror story about how you get -- you can have your own island. Well, a couple of people did that and I guess there were some mosquitoes, obviously, which were pains. But, also, there were these wild animals that would come up, and they had to keep the fire going all night. So the guy was staying up all night getting eaten by mosquitoes trying to keep the wolves away. So I guess I didn't really want to do that. It worked out nice. So that really didn't excite me. But, that was what my original thought was. But then to hop on a plane and travel that distance just to do that, we ended up having our own place, it was nice. We had a week there. And we really didn't have that long of a honeymoon because our house had just been completed and we wanted to move into it. So it's been an exciting off-season for us, a lot has happened. It's been fun.

PHIL MICKELSON: That was in November, middle to late November.