Charles Howell III Returns; Phil Mickelson, too?
Charles Howell winning is a nice story. He'd not played well for several years and had made some changes to his swing that finally paid off with victory and an early season stranglehold on the FedEx Cup.
The most intriguing part of the weekend isn't Howell completing a return to prominence. It's the return of Phlailing Phil. After making a birdie on 17 to go a stroke up on Howell, Mickelson wasted his chance to win by making a bogey on 18, then losing on the third playoff hole. The phinal hole at Riviera is no cakewalk, but when the one phailing is Phil, it makes it easy to call it a choke. So I call it that, a choke. It remains to be seen if Phil really has gotten over Winged Phoot. He won at Pebble, but it wasn't close. At the Nissan yesterday, it was close, and Phil phlopped when it mattered.
Same old song and dance. Forget Daddy Tiger, the story of 2007 may yet be Phil's Psyche.