Yep, Phil Mickelson Is Still Crazy, Part 2

You're standing on a cart path, trying to figure out the best place to play a shot from 250 yards. At what point does, "you know, on the cart path makes the most sense" cross your mind? Never? Ever?

Phil Mickelson was the 15th at the Memorial on Sunday, and was in desperate need of a birdie. He had hit his drive in a creek so an up and down with a fairway wood was his only chance.

What did he do? He tried to draw the damn thing off concrete. I have no words. Just watch this looney tune.

I truly believe that most of the time, Phil cares about his golf game, but much like LeBron James, sometimes the drama overcomes sense and sensibility. Do me a favor, if you have an extra three-wood lying around your apartment.

Go try to make a hook golf swing with it on your parking lot. Oh, and then go to the doctor for your obligatory wrist injury.

You're a crazy cat, Philly. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, he made double-bogey here.)

Yep, Phil Mickelson Is Still Crazy

You have to love Phil Mickelson for how his mind works at times. This is a guy that once tried to play a U.S. Open without a driver, and has put two drivers in at times to move the ball left or right (Somewhere, Bobby Jones is rolling in his grave). He gives his caddie one veto a year on a golf shot, and that's it. Even back in his amateur days, Phil would give match play opponents long par putts when Phil had a birdie putt just to screw with the guy.

What did he do on Friday at the Memorial that caused a stir? He decided to go for the par-4 14th, not a crazy move for a guy that bombs it as long as anyone on tour. Why did he? Because he missed the 13th fairway. Yep.

Here goes.

“I have never gone an entire round hitting every fairway,” Mickelson said, “and I hit every fairway through 11, 12 holes.
“When I missed it on 13, I thought I’d hit driver on 14 because it didn’t matter. If I had hit that fairway on 13, I would have hit iron on 14.

“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the way I was thinking.”

You've heard the term over-thinking, right? Well, this is it at its absolute best. The guy is mentally keeping track of how many fairways he had hit on the day, and if he had somehow found the 13th, he would have laid up on the 14th just to keep his fairway streak alive.

How can you not love someone this insane?

Scott Halleran, Getty Images

Okay, So This is Pretty Solid

I'll admit something, and I'm actually quite proud of it; I haven't owned a gaming device since the Nintendo 64. I've played the Wii a total of two times, both at my ex-girlfriends house, and that was at least a year and change ago. Video games never have interested me that much (I'd rather be outside, doing man things! Chest bump!).

That said, some of the EA Sports promotions for the new Tiger Woods game are awesome. This one, including Rickie Fowler, especially made me chuckle. Curling!!

The Memorial Skins Game Looked Fun

These two pictures are from Wednesday's Memorial Skins Game. The top one is of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, and looks like someone took it with their alien camera.

The second is Phil Mickelson looking as creepy as ever. Tiger and Phil were the big winners of the skins game, but honestly, you're probably the biggest winner because you get to view both these photos. Pat yourself on the back, friend.

Padraig Harrington Tests His Pee ... Daily

Yep. That headline isn't some sort of joke. Padraig Harrington, winner of three major championships and best accent on tour, has decided to take his physical fitness to a completely different level. Paddy is now testing his urine every morning with a thing called a refractometer.

What the hell is a refractometer? Well, basically it is a device that you place a droplet of your urine on, and then submit that back to a lab. Padraig is doing that every morning to check and make sure his is properly hydrated, or something.

Honestly, I'm not a doctor (shocker!), so here is what the report says.

Every day, Harrington will use a hand-held refractometer to determine if he is properly hydrated. He simply places a drop of urine on the prism and forwards the results to his health and fitness specialist Dr Liam Hennessy for analysis.

On the 15 to 20 weeks per year that Dr Hennessy travels with the Irishman to tournaments, the medic himself will conduct daily blood, urine and stress testing on Harrington to ensure he is in peak physical condition, especially going into that crunch time at tournaments -- Sunday afternoon.

I know that as an athlete you want any edge possible, but sending droplets of your piss to a doctor thousands of miles away to make sure you have enough water in your system seems a bit much. This is coming from a guy that won three majors when he wasn't submitting pee samples to anyone, and has struggled in clutch situations the last year and a half (I blame his pee).

The good news? At least he isn't going Moises Alou on us all and washing his hands with the remaining pee. I'm sure at some point a golfer will do this and quote "better feel" to the urine cleansing.

Another Reason Why the AJGA Might be the Best Run Golf Organization in the World

If you haven't had a chance to read Damon Hack's column on the AJGA, get with the program. Hack focused his column on the Thunderbird, an event in Arizona that hosts many of the best junior golfers in the world. It is one of the AJGA "majors," and is as important a win as something like the U.S. Amateur.

The column gives a pretty good illustration to those that don't know much about the American Junior Golf Association, the PGA Tour of junior golf.

See, if you are a decent junior golf, the AJGA are four letters that are more important than As, Bs, Cs or Ds on a report card. Just to get in events is nearly impossible, and once you do, you better make some waves. The towels from events are strung over any junior golfer's golf clubs, and hats are shirts are worn like prizes.

The events are always as polished as anything you'd see on the PGA Tour, and playing in a final round has the pressures of mini tour golfers trying to make a check.

I was lucky enough to get an invite back in my day to my first AJGA event in Abilene, Texas. I was one of the fortunate (read: lucky as hell) ones that played well enough in my first event to get some invites into other events throughout the rest of my high school career, and being able to show yourself on that type of stage is really the only way you'll ever be exposed to high school coaches.

This was probably my favorite line from the Hack piece, and it shows just what is going on with our young golfers these days.

"It's the number one thing in my life right now — I'd probably put it ahead of school," says Anthony Paolucci, 17, from Del Mar, Calif., who led after each of the first two rounds with scores of 66 and 69. (Editor's note: Paolucci closed with a 69 to win the event by three shots.) "After school, I go practice. I work out three or four times a week. I have a physical therapist for deep-tissue massaging, and I have a chiropractor. You don't want to have an injury when you're 22, as much as we practice these days. I have a whole team working."

Go over to Golf.com and read it. I think you'll enjoy hearing how intense junior golf really is these days.

A Year Ago at the Memorial

In 2009, Tiger Woods was still golf's shining star, a man returning from a knee injury but once again on top of the game. Nothing showed this more than the Memorial Skins Game, that included Tiger, Kenny Perry, Stewart Cink and host Jack Nicklaus.

The above video shows it all, but I figured it would be worth transcribing exactly what happened. Tiger needed to make a clutch 15-footer to save par on the 18th hole, and of course rolled it in only to have Kenny laugh and exclaim, "You always make it." This was true. Up until that point, Tiger had never really missed a putt of any importance. That would all change later in the year, at the PGA Championship, when Woods missed a huge par save on the 17th hole to give Y.E. Yang a huge cushion heading into the 18th hole, which he would birdie and bump Tiger from his "never losing a 54-hole lead in a major" pedestal.

But, back to the skins game. The result of his par putt forced a chip off between the players. Tiger stood over his ball in rainy conditions, scooped at his wedge shot and waiting as Jack let him know that the shot looked good. It was good. Good enough to drop in the cup, and lead to that "f*** I'm good, and I know it" grin and laugh we've seen too many times from Tiger.

This year is obviously different. Tiger is limping in, figuratively and emotionally, and who knows how the man that has won this event four times (including 2009) will fare. For the first time in Tiger's career, the pick on how he will finish extends past "well, top-5 or a win." He might miss the cut. He might withdraw. He might win.

We don't know. The good thing is, we have the Internet, and it gives us video like the one above, of the better days for Tiger and for us. Things seemed simpler then. Hopefully we can get back to that point sooner than later.