No player may have any history or relationship with Chambers Bay and these Pacific Northwest fans, but one marched around Thursday as the king of the U.S. Open championship.
Phil Mickelson owns the U.S. Open
Even at a new venue with a new crowd, there’s no one the people want to see more than the guy who has had the most crushing failures in this championship.
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Phil Mickelson strolled through the first round of his national championship, in a region where he’s never played, owning the place. We’re used to identifying a player with a specific tournament or championship based on their dominance or relation to the region (e.g. Arnie at Augusta, Tiger at Torrey). But the inverse has occurred with the U.S. Open. Mickelson’s repeated failures and close calls have made this tournament his big week every year, and it will be so until he wins one. At 45-years-old, with a record six runner-up finishes and one outstanding gap in the career slam, he’s the headliner of this championship and the tournament’s most compelling player.
Mickelson played his first round in the morning wave Thursday, heading out on the course with other superstars like world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, Day 1 leader Dustin Johnson, and two-time Masters champ Bubba Watson. But it was Phil that the people wanted to see. Some did, and some didn’t as this new venue figures out how to best control the crowds and fans search for spots where you can get out from a pathway buried between mounds and actually, you know, watch golf.
The crowds gathered on the back nine with Mickelson four and five holes away, sometimes having to wait over an hour before they could catch a glimpse. The grandstand at the 18th, which wraps around the entire green and is larger than normal because of the lack of viewing areas at this course, was completely full as Phil got into the middle of his back nine. The theater holds 6,000, according to the marshall standing guard and turning fans away after the area filled up by lunchtime of the first round. A long line formed at each opening leading up to the grandstand, and there was still plenty of time before Phil would get there, but this was a hopeless endeavor for most.
Phil may be the most popular lefty in the world, but his playing partner, Bubba, has probably been the best American golfer in recent years. He’s an extremely marketable face -- there where some “Go Dawgs” chants and barking as he walked off the 18th tee, but they were quickly drowned out by fans just shouting “Phil!” over and over. Even when Bubba dropped an incredible tee shot on a table-top sized landing area at the 17th tee and made a birdie, the noise from Phil burning the edge and missing a putt was comparable.
It’s hard for any hole to hold a large crowd here, but the 17th, a par-3, was surrounded. A pathway along the train tracks that abut Puget Sound is usually reserved for county residents to walk their dogs, but fans gathered there in a large group Thursday morning to try to see Phil standing on top of the 17th green. The group was 15 feet below the elevated and mounded green complex and some 30 yards back, so there was absolutely no way they could see Mickelson’s putt towards the hole. They just wanted a glimpse.
The overflowing crowds in the grandstands and around the ropes, from the tee area to the green, muttered about the six-time runner-up for the entire 15 minutes he occupied the hole. One fan commented on how good his body looked. Another was excited just to see “Bones,” Mickelson’s caddie, who has become a minor celebrity by association. Several shouted “Happy Birthday Phil!” It was not Mickelson’s birthday, but maybe they didn’t have tickets on Tuesday and just had to have him know they wished him the best for his 45th. Tiger Woods will draw comparable, if not larger crowds in the afternoon, but that group will be much more ... divided on the reasons why their watching.
You hear so much about how the New York-area crowds, often a site of the U.S. Open, back Mickelson. But given how this neophyte major championship group responded on Thursday, that seems to be the case everywhere he goes for this title. Fortunately for his fans, Mickelson is under-par and in the top 10 so they’ll have three more days to crowd around him and shout encouragement. Much of the Phil fandom in other weeks might be based on empty narratives and unrequited love of a pro athlete. But in large part due to his failures, the U.S. Open has become his event.
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