Aussie Cameron Smith hopes to be secret ingredient for International Team at Presidents Cup

CROMWELL, Conn. – OK, he never claimed to be more powerful than a locomotive or possess the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But Phil Mickelson surely never refused to stand on the tee box and go toe-to-toe with anyone. Often to his detriment. But he was a young stallion then. Today he’s a sly fox. But after posting 7-under 63 – his best score in a PGA TOUR tournament since firing that same score in Round 4 of the Dell Technologies Championship in 2018 – Mickelson is in position to tie Walter Hagen for eighth place on the career victory list. RELATED: Leaderboard | Tee times | Morikawa’s made cut streak comes to an end | Gordon making the most of opportunity at Travelers That itself is no surprise. Mickelson remains a fiercely competitive force and as deft as ever with the short-iron game. The surprise is that he showed humility and good sense, a blueprint he once would have discarded on the way to the first tee. But knowing that Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau were his playing competitors, Mickelson took a deep breath and rejected those voices within. “I made some strides in the sense that I didn’t try to go toe-to-toe with two of the longest guys in the game,” said Mickelson. For example, the 442-yard, bombs-away, par-4 seventh. McIlroy ripped it 353, DeChambeau rifled it 359, but Phil dinked it out there with a 3-wood. He made birdie. At the dogleg right, McIlroy (321) and DeChambeau (358) took it up and over trees to get it down near the green. Mickelson carved another 3-wood around the bunkers and into the fairway, a mere 306. He made birdie. At the par-5 13th and par-4 14th, Mickelson played conservatively, again with 3-woods. Each shot found the fairway, each hole was birdied. His competitors hit drives all over the map at those holes. “There are some holes where I can open it up and hit driver,” said Mickelson. “But really, I just want to get it in play.” Knowing those words coming out of his mouth were stunning, Mickelson acknowledge, “I know, it’s not like me.” But he’s never been 50 before, never had to reign things in, never seen the likes of what DeChambeau has brought to the PGA TOUR in this restart to the 2019-20 season. “It is hard for me. .. it’s hard for anyone to imagine how straight he hits it for as hard as he hits it,” said Mickelson, shaking his head. Though he shot 67 – 132 and at 8-under is tied for ninth, five shots back, DeChambeau had Mickelson gushing. “I mean, he drove it pin-high at No. 9. Are you kidding me?” Observers may have said thing to themselves, listening to Mickelson concede he had backed off any challenge to try and match his playing competitors. But the lefthander said he learned the hard way at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera than to miss with the big boys. “I tried in LA to match it with Brooks (Koepka) and Bubba (Watson), and those guys are long,” said Mickelson. “I was trying to swing hard and I ended up missing the cut. I ended up not playing well and I learned from that.”

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The ball is round, weather is variable, equipment occasionally breaks. And then there’s COVID. Still, it’s time to predict what’s in store for the year ahead. So, let’s get right to it. Here are 10 things that absolutely, positively will go down in 2022, because they simply must, or we want them to, or something like that. Full disclosure: If even nine of these come to pass it would be amazing, eight would be impressive, seven pretty darn good, six not bad at all, five a very solid effort, four … 1. Rickie and Xander win again A victory for Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele would break a three-year drought for each. Fowler’s last win came at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, while Schauffele’s last win on TOUR – which doesn’t include his Olympic gold — came at the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions. That Schauffele didn’t win last season owed to lousy timing, with poor final rounds at the Waste Management Phoenix Open (71, T2) and the Masters (72, T3). You know it’s in him: He got up and down on the last hole to win the Olympic gold medal. His final-round scoring average was 69.22, 15th on TOUR, but his Round 3 average was 70.28, 85th. He’ll fix it. As for Fowler, whose 11-year streak of making the FedExCup Playoffs ended with a thud, the tee-to-green game is solid, but not so his work on the greens. No. 1 in Strokes Gained: Putting as recently as 2017, he was 126th last season as he wound up 134th in the FedExCup. Now that his tee-to-green swing changes have solidified, Fowler must find a way to make the putts fall again. When he does, he’ll turn the close calls – T3 at THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT in October (third-round 63) – into wins again. He’s still only 33. 2. Tiger returns at St. Andrews The Old Course at St. Andrews, where the Royal & Ancient folks and everyone else will toast the 150th playing of The Open in July, is flat as a pancake and thus relatively easy to walk. The tournament is not for another seven months, giving Woods plenty of time to get stronger. Oh, and he’s won two of his three claret jugs at St. Andrews. There’s always a chance Woods could surprise us and pop into Augusta for the Masters, but the guess here is the course is too hilly, and treacherous, for him to make that his first week back. Also, although it’s barely any sort of prediction, Woods and his son, Charlie, will tee it up again at the PNC Championship in December, only this time they’ll turn that runner-up into a W. 3. Scheffler and McNealy get first wins Look for the teammates from the United States’ historic 2017 Walker Cup team – the roster also included Collin Morikawa, Cameron Champ, Will Zalatoris, Doug Ghim and Doc Redman – to enter the winner’s circle in the same season. Stanford alum McNealy did a lot right at the Fortinet Championship at Silverado last fall, other than a stretch of four bogeys in seven holes in the third round. His 70-68 weekend just wasn’t enough as he got pipped by fellow Bay Area product Max Homa of Cal (65-65) by a shot. McNealy is only 26, he’s getting better every season, and he knows how to win. It’s coming. Don’t be surprised if that win comes in his native Northern California, as he’s also played well at Pebble Beach the past two years. Meanwhile, it hasn’t been that long since Scheffler beat Jon Rahm in singles at the Ryder Cup. If he can do that, he can win on TOUR; all it’s going to take is a hot putting week. He already has two top-5s this season, including a runner-up at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Open, and is on the precipice of the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking despite his lack of a TOUR victory. That’s testament to how steady he is. He closed 2021 by finishing second in the unofficial Hero World Challenge. 4. Homa will win a major or THE PLAYERS True, Homa can sometimes be the last guy to believe in his own greatness, but of his three wins, two have come on major-quality venues (2021 Genesis Invitational at Riviera, 2019 Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow). What’s more, there was something bloodless and clinical about his 65-65 weekend for his third and most recent victory, at the Fortinet Championship last fall. Of course, a win in one of these big events would help him return to the site of his maiden win for the 2022 Presidents Cup. Keep an eye on him this year. 5. Ancer and Smith lead Presidents Cup upset The International Team banked invaluable self-belief in its narrow loss in 2019. The U.S. stars routed Europe in the Ryder Cup and almost NEVER lose the Presidents Cup. Yep, conditions are ripe for an upset. Ancer was the surprise of the 2019 Presidents Cup, going 3-1-1 to tie Sungjae Im as the top point-earner for the Internationals. Smith, who just edged Jon Rahm to capture the Sentry Tournament of Champions, beat Justin Thomas in Singles to go 1-1-1 last time around in Oz. Those two rising stars give Trevor Immelman’s International Team a toughness they’ve rarely if ever had, and when you add veterans Marc Leishman, Hideki Matsuyama, Adam Scott and Louis Oosthuizen; ultra-steady Im; resurgent Branden Grace; plus Joaquin Niemann, Mito Pereira, and perhaps Garrick Higgo, this team looks poised to shock the world at Quail Hollow. 6. Spieth wins the Masters – or The Open Spieth and the Masters are the perfect marriage of man and major. The good times, of course, included his maiden green jacket in 2015, when he basically won everything that wasn’t nailed down. He was cruising for a successful title defense in ’16 until a water ball on 12 sunk his chances (T2). He was T11 in ’17 (final-round 75), solo third in ’18, and T3 last season, after breaking his win drought a week earlier at the Valero Texas Open. With his game back in full force, Spieth is primed to collect his second green jacket. And don’t forget about The Open at St. Andrews, where he finished a shot out of a playoff in 2015 while pursuing the Grand Slam. 7. Mickelson wins the Schwab Cup In November, Lefty joined Jack Nicklaus as the only players to win four of their first six starts on PGA TOUR Champions at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship. But Mickelson didn’t play in enough tournaments amongst the 50-and-over set to win the season-long Schwab Cup points race, which was won once again by Bernhard Langer. This time, Mickelson will win the marathon and the sprint. Of course, predicting anything Mickelson-related is risky, and after his moonshot victory at the PGA Championship last year he’s at liberty to keep teeing it up with the big boys at big events like the U.S. Open (his white whale). And he will. But now he also has a taste for Champions competition, too; he’s realized he enjoys playing with (and beating) guys his own age. The guess here is Mickelson will find time to hang with the young guys and beat the old guys, too, at least enough times to take home the trophy for the season-long competition. 8. Two others besides Rahm will touch No. 1 It’s tempting to say Rahm can’t be caught at world No. 1, what with his birdie-filled performance at the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, where he finished a shot behind winner Cameron Smith. And given what we’ve seen since Rahm regained the top spot with a T3 at The Open last summer, he deserves to be there. He’s the best player. And yet … Rahm is human, he can’t play every week, and the level of talent at the top in 2022 is staggering. Given the neck-snapping trajectories of Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland, surely one or two will reach the top spot at least briefly. Morikawa already would have done so absent his freakish bad final round at the Hero World Challenge. And what about a comeback for former No. 1s Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, and/or Justin Thomas? Yes, Rahm is the best player, but it’s just too crowded at the top. 9. Burns and Mitchell make the U.S. Presidents Cup Team Burns is a no-brainer, what with his recent exploits. The only surprise, perhaps, is he wasn’t on the super-stacked U.S. Team that dusted Europe at the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits. Mitchell has fought inconsistency but is trending in the right direction with a T3 (THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT) and T12 (The RSM Classic) last fall. Also encouraging: his three straight birdies to top-10 at THE NORTHERN TRUST and play his way into the BMW Championship. Oh, and Rory McIlroy praised his game last year after they duked it out at the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow, which as fate would have it hosts the Presidents Cup this year. 10. DeChambeau will get even longer With moonshots that topped out at around 400 yards, DeChambeau, the two-time reigning PGA TOUR driving distance champion, finished in the elite eight in his first crack at the Professional Long Drivers World Championship in Mesquite, Nevada, last fall. He loved the event’s smash-and-flex vibe and promised to return. He’ll do even better this time, his commitment to speed and innovation wowing fans as he powers his way to a final-four finish on the grid.

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