I missed this live. I'd been watching the U.S. Open since 11 AM and had taken a break to work outside for a while. I wish I could have heard the commentary live. Great tragic dramas are always best experienced live.
Saturday at the U.S. Open. It's your birthday. You've had a decent day but are starting to leak oil. Your chances of completing the career grand slam are about gone for another year. Your normally reliable putter is going south. You have a 12-footer for bogey which you hit too hard and your ball is headed off the green. You chase down your ball as it's dribbling down the slope and slap it back toward the hole to avoid having to make a long walk after it.
Hitting a moving ball is a 2-stroke penalty. Phil Mickelson knew that and said (an hour after finishing his round, obviously after much thought about his actions and what he'd say about them) that he'd always wanted to do that (take a two-stroke penalty for hitting a moving ball) but never had. Maybe U.S. Open pressure is just really hard, but my admiration for Phil just took a big hit. Most of the time Phil will take his lumps and move on, and he's usually a guy with great respect for the game, the fans, and history. Taking a 10 isn't what I wanted to see him do, but I would have rather seen him do it gracefully and without a disgraceful display of rule breaking.
Here's the thing. For the price of one stroke (and David Fay, former executive director of the USGA who was part of the Fox coverage, mentioned this), where ever that ball ended up, he could have declared it unplayable and played his putt over again. So, why blatantly break a rule to save walking after his ball? I think you have to go back to a comment Phil made last week regarding the 7th hole at Shinnecock Hills on Sunday in 2004. He claimed the 7th hole was a great hole until the USGA set it up. I think the 6 runner-up finishes and Phil's personal burr under his bonnet bubbled over on Saturday. In my opinion, he wanted to stick a finger in the face of the USGA. He wanted to point out how upset he was with the course setup. If his name wasn't Mickelson, he'd probably have faced disqualification for intentionally deliberately influencing the progress of his own ball (Rule 1-2). Instead, the committee ruled that they were penalizing Phil for breaking 14-5. Cowards.
It's now Saturday night. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that Phil's actions were not in the spirit of the game. Phil could withdraw, issue an apology for his actions, and take responsibility for loosing his cool.
None of us may ever play on Saturday at the U.S. Open and face the kind of pressure that makes us lose our cool, but there may be times in any competitive match when you boil over and contemplate saying or doing something stupid. My advice? Preserve your honor, honor the game, and don't show your ass.