Phil Mickelson supports, moves on without Tiger Woods at Safeway Open

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson was the marquee matchup the golf world could not wait to watch at this week’s curtain-raiser to the PGA Tour’s 2016-2017 season, but then Tiger developed stage fright so that Throwback Thursday drama is off for now — or perhaps forever.

Theories abound as to why Woods withdrew from the Safeway Open just three days after committing to the event following some 14 months away from competition. Tiger conceded, in a shocking revelation, that his game was too “vulnerable” for public consumption.

Some strange explanations/defenses popped up from Team Tiger, including agent Mark Steinberg’s awkward claim, given the nasty connotation surrounding “locker room” these days, that his client “was really looking forward to competing, to playing, to being in the locker room again. He really missed being in the locker room.”

Life coach Notah Begay III somehow blamed Florida’s recent deadly weather for Woods’ stunning about-face.

“The hurricane didn’t help,” said Begay, who reported that his Stanford teammate’s decision was not related to his back, “and he had some concerns about the sharpness of his game.”

Begay, who was as surprised as anyone about Woods’ announcement, acknowledged that his old friend would have to shake off a lot of rust.

“Everybody knows there’s going to be shots that he’s going to call on that might not come off the way he wanted,” Begay said. “But after talking to him this morning, he just didn’t feel like his game was where he wanted it to be to be competitive.”

Brandel Chamblee was the first to call Woods’ short-game woes the “chipping yips” after Tiger chunked and bladed his way to a DFL finish at the 2014 Hero World Challenge and a horrific start to his 2015 season.

The Golf Channel analyst believes Tiger needs a complete mental and physical overhaul of his wedge play “if he makes his way back.”

An equal number of guesses and prognostications have taken shots at when — or if — the former world No. 1 will take his exhibition-ready swing beyond clinics and his home course, where he was reportedly “flushing everything” (though one now must wonder if “flushing” meant something far less complimentary than how most of us interpreted Jasper Parnevik’s comments).

Johnny Miller, whose tourney Woods stiffed this week, was among the few skeptics who took a wait-and-see attitude toward Tiger’s reported return.

“I just had a feeling. Everybody in the world was texting me, offering me congratulations [on Tiger playing Silverado],” Miller told Golf Digest. “I wrote back, ‘I’ll believe he’s coming when he tees off first thing Thursday morning on the first tee.’”

Oddly, Miller believes that Woods — the focus of other-worldly media and fan attention since he was 2 — was taken aback by the interest in his much-awaited resurgence.

“My gut is that he wanted to come,” Miller said, “but the hoopla … the last couple days, he must be looking at that thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh. What am I getting into? I’d like to be home, taking my kids to school, running my restaurant, nothing like having to posting a score.’”

Woods, whose last outing resulted in a T10 finish at the Wyndham Championship in August 2015, faces too many obstacles to make a comeback, opined six-time major champion Nick Faldo.

“Everything is stacking up against him now,” Faldo told Newsweek. “Physically, mentally and obviously competing.”

The ever-optimistic Mickelson, who last teed it up with Woods in the opening rounds of the 2014 PGA Championship, had a different take on Tiger’s eventual rebound. Indeed, Lefty looked forward to his erstwhile rival’s return to the tour on his own timetable.

“We’ll all wait in anticipation and we’re excited, but I understand there’s a lot of pressure not just to come back but to perform when he does come back,” Mickelson said ahead of the Safeway, according to GolfChannel.com.

The two superstars communicated more leading up to and during the Ryder Cup than perhaps in their entire careers. Woods, at the helm of a golf cart, never hit a ball during the week and Mickelson, who led the U.S. to its first victory over the Europeans since 2008, said the fitness of Tiger’s game — under intense scrutiny even before his Safeway WD — was not a topic of discussion.

“All the members of the media that were coming here when he was committed and all the analysis of his swing, analysis of his game, all that stuff leads to pressure,” Mickelson said. “If he doesn’t feel like it’s right, then he needs to wait. We support him.”

Still amped about the Ryder Cup, Mickelson was grouped with Bill Haas and 2016 Rookie of the Year Emilian Grillo in the opening rounds at Johnny Miller’s Silverado Resort.

So here we are, with Tiger, a couple months shy of his 41st birthday, apparently headed toward a second career as team vice captain and eventual skipper, and Phil putting off his turn as shuttle driver and gofer until at least 2020.

“It’s been 22 years since there have been 10 Americans that have been able to beat me [out to make the team], so I don’t know why it would stop now,” Mickelson, 46, told ESPN.com about his expectations for the biennial event in Europe in 2018. “I plan on being on the team in France and absolutely one of my goals is to play in France because I’ve never been on a winning Ryder Cup team over in Europe. I want to win a Ryder Cup over there, and I want to be part of that as a player.’’

Woods, meanwhile, has already signed on as assistant skip to Steve Stricker at next year’s Presidents Cup. The 786th-ranked player in the world contends he will play in the Hero World Challenge in December, though spectators may want to wait until tee time to finalize their ticket purchases.