Tiger Woods has changed even the nomenclature of golf. He gave us Tiger Slam, idiomatic for winning four major championships in a row, but not in the same calendar year. And he originated cold-shafting, the term for starting predawn practice rounds without so much as a warmup shot.
Phil Mickelson, the Avis to Tiger's Hertz, made his contribution last week. We can now welcome Phili dip, employed either as a noun or a verb, into the game's lexicon. Chili dip is golfspeak for laying sod over the ball with a sand wedge, or hitting the ball fat. A Phili dip is when you do it on the green, the way Phil did on Riviera's 9th hole during the final round of the Nissan Open when it appeared as if he was on his way to his second victory in as many weeks.
Facing a 98-foot putt with a slab of fringe and rough blocking his path to the cup, Mickelson elected to hit one of his patented flop shots. Smart play, but this patent must have expired because Mickelson Phili dipped, stubbing his wedge into the green and moving his ball only 15 feet. He salvaged a bogey, but the Phili dip exemplified the awkward, inexplicable way he lost a tournament that he seemed to have won from the moment he arrived -- in style -- in Los Angeles after his dominating victory at Pebble Beach.
Mickelson, who commuted the 100 miles from his house in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., to Pacific Palisades by means of a chartered plane, hadn't had much luck at Riviera -- his best finish was a 15th in 1999 -- so he invited LPGA Hall of Famer and Riviera member Amy Alcott to accompany him on a practice round, during which she offered advice on how to play the holes and read some of the trickier greens. But on Sunday ... well, the ending may sound familiar. Coming to the 72nd hole needing a par to win and a bogey to tie, Mickelson pushed his tee shot left, failed to reach the green with his approach, left a delicate pitch seven feet short and missed the par putt. When he subsequently couldn't match three straight pars by Charles Howell in a playoff, Mickelson had Phili dipped the whole darn tournament.
Here's why it's so tough being Phil in the Tiger Woods Era. Last Friday afternoon Mickelson found himself on the right half of the 6th green. The pin was on the back left. Between Phil and the pin was the notorious bunker that squats in the middle of the green. A green with a bunker in the middle of it? At the Riv, it's genius. Anywhere else, it's goofy.
Anyway, Ernie Els was also on the wrong side of the green and played a low-running chip to the back level. Phil, wielding his lob wedge like a scalpel, hit a remarkable flop to four feet and saved par. He brushed the ball off the green so cleanly that he didn't bother to look down after his follow-through because he knew there was no divot. Even Els, after seeing the shot, looked back at Mickelson with an expression that said, You cannot be serious. Yes, Mickelson botched the same shot on Sunday, but it's certainly in his repertoire. Like Tiger, Mickelson loves the sort of challenge a shot like that presents. The difference is that Tiger's batting average is considerably higher.
