AUGUSTA, Ga. — Phil Mickelson did no hiding yesterday, revealing he feels particularly “nervous’’ entering this week’s Masters because he did not play an event the week before the year’s first major championship, which is his usual custom.
“I’m a little bit nervous heading in because I’m not competing the week before, as I have for many years in the past,’’ Mickelson said yesterday.
Mickelson, however, hopes to counter that nervousness with a new “Phrankenwood” driver he’s put into his bag — a club that originated as a 3-wood that was generating nearly as much length as he was with his driver.
“I drove it really well to win, when I won in Phoenix this year,’’ he said. “And the following week I put in our 3 wood, our X Hot 3 wood. I hit it as far as my driver. I couldn’t believe it, it like shot off the face. As I’ve played Doral and I’ve played Houston and I’ve played these last few weeks, I hit it off almost every tee because it’s so easy to hit, and it just bores through the air and I don’t have to manipulate it and it just goes so far.
“So I asked the engineers to take that technology in that club, in our 3 wood, and just put it on steroids — which is probably not the best way to say it, OK — but I wanted to make it more like a driver. So it looks like a 3 wood, but it’s bigger than our 3 wood. It’s almost like a small driver, but it’s the 3 wood technology of our X Hot into a driver.
“Tee shots on 9 are getting down to the bottom of the hill, and I haven’t been able to do that in years. The tee shot on 10 is getting another 15 to 20 yards, giving me a club or two less than I’ve had in years. The tee shot on 15 is getting down to where I have one or two clubs less, and because it comes off fast, as well as low spin, it’s running, which is exactly what I wanted here.’’
Mickelson, who has won three Masters, recently had made the Shell Houston Open his lead-in event because it was the last tournament on the schedule before the Masters and because the course plays similar to Augusta National,
with its lack of rough and shaved-down areas around the greens.
The PGA Tour this year changed the schedule and gave the Valero Texas Open the pre-Masters date and moved Houston to two weeks before. Mickelson played Houston, but did not play San Antonio, because the conditions are not conducive to Masters preparation.
* Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy had different opinions yesterday about whether they are “rivals.”
“I don’t see myself a rival to Tiger or to anyone,” McIlroy said. “When you speak of rivals, you tend to put rivals who have had similar success.
“He’s got 77 PGA Tour wins; I’ve got six. He’s got 14 majors; I’ve got two. If I saw myself a rival to Tiger, I wouldn’t really be doing him much justice.’’
Later in the day, Woods, who wrested the No. 1 world ranking away from McIlroy last month, said he “definitely’’ considers McIlroy a rival.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve had a few,’’ Woods said. “Certainly Rory is this generation. I’ve had Phil and Vijay [Singh] and Ernie [Els] and David [Duval] for a number of years, and now Rory’s the leading [player] of this new, younger generation.’’