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OWINGS MILLS, Md. – Phil Mickelson, a staple of every Ryder Cup team since 1995, is still trying to force his way into Steve Stricker’s line up but confirmed he’d accept a vice-captains role should he fail to make the squad. Mickelson sits 19th on the U.S. team points list with the top six automatic picks confirmed following the BMW Championship this week. Stricker will then select six more members to round out the squad after the TOUR Championship. After an opening round 4-under 68 at Caves Valley Mickelson needs a huge final three rounds to make a surge into Stricker’s thinking and even qualify for the TOUR Championship. The veteran came in as the last man qualified at 70th in the FedExCup and needs to finish in the top 3 to advance. As his second-round tee time approached he sat eight shots off the lead. “The only way for me to have a realistic chance of being picked is to get into the TOUR Championship and then play well in the TOUR Championship,” Mickelson said. “I’m certainly a long shot I would say, but I’m starting to play well, and if I can put together three good rounds, you never know.” Of course Stricker can pick anyone he likes and may yet still decide Mickelson’s experience, and the fact he proved his winning prowess by becoming the oldest major champion ever at the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island in May, should be part of his squad. Mickelson was on winning teams in 1999, 2008 and 2016 but has lost nine times and holds a 18-22-7 record in 47 matches which is the record for most played and most losses. When asked directly about taking up a position amongst Stricker’s captaincy team that includes Davis Love III, Zach Johnson and Jim Furyk at this time, Mickelson admitted he’d consider it. “I love being a part of the Ryder Cup in any way, shape or form, so of course. But I’m not thinking about that right now,” he said.

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Cody Blick set the golf world on fire when he took to social media reporting that his golf clubs had been stolen prior to the final round of Web.com Qualifying School. Then, with a set of pieced together golf clubs, he fired a final-round 63 to qualify for eight guaranteed starts on the Web.com Tour this season. Well, a month later, Blick reported that he found his golf clubs. The story involves a homeless man, a random woman, his mother Carol, his brave college roommate Taylor Bromley, a Venmo exchange for $300, and a bunch of damaged golf clubs. I caught up with Blick to get the whole story. Here is Blick’s tale about how he recovered his stolen set of Titleist golf clubs. Q: So this is an absolutely crazy story. Can you go through exactly how you ended up getting your clubs back? Blick: Yeah, you know, it was probably three days ago now. And honestly, Titleist replaced every club in the bag except the putter, I’m still kind of having trouble with that one. It was from 2012, and I had been using that one ever since. They sent me a couple putters to try out, they tried to match the weight because I had the swing weight and the overall weight in my records. They were close, it just wasn’t the same. Everything was fine. So, at this point I had pretty much just accepted that I wasn’t going to see the putter or my old clubs again. I got a text, I actually got two missed calls from my mom and my dad. And then I saw a text from my mom and it was just pictures of the golf bag. The stitching was ripped out of my first name on the bag. And her comment was just ‘Is this your bag? We might have found it.’ And instantly I just got super excited and called her back. So this woman apparently, in Arizona, was I guess just walking down the street and she ran into this homeless man. I guess his sign said he was looking for money for a hotel room. Her story is that she didn’t want to just give him money, she asked if he had anything to sell. And so she claims that she then was taken back into his tent under the overpass. And there she saw the clubs and she said ‘OK, I’ll give you $75 for the set of golf clubs.’ Not knowing the story or that they were my clubs, just thinking she could resell the golf clubs. She gets home, and my last name ‘Blick’ was stamped into the wedges, and I guess she thought that was the model number. She googled ‘Blick golf clubs’ and up came the story. And so at that point she said she went onto Whitepages to try and get in contact with us. She found my mom’s phone number and gave her a call. So we got in contact with her. Then my college roommate, Taylor, his parents just moved to Arizona in December. So he was out there for New Years. I called him and I was like ‘Hey man, we found the clubs. Can I Venmo you 300 bucks and you meet up with this random woman and get my clubs back for me?’ And so he said ‘Yea.’ So they met in front of some SuperMarket and he checked out the clubs, and they’re pretty beat up, but I’m just happy to get them back. Gave her the $300 and flew home the next day. Then I met him in the parking lot of an In-N-Out burger and got my clubs back. Q: That seems sketchy that a woman would go up to a homeless man with a sign and be like ‘Do you have anything for sale?’ Blick: That’s what I said too, and then the same person would go into his tent, you know? And then that’s kind of reckless of your boy Taylor to meet up with her, no? Blick: Yeah, big time. It was kind of sketchy. I didn’t know who she was or if a bunch of guys were going to show up. You just don’t know. He was for it, so I mean, he went for it. He must have been sketched out. He didn’t really say much about it, but I can’t imagine he was feeling too comfortable leading up to that. Q: Usually you’d bring a friend or some sort of security when you meet up in those kind of circumstances. He just went solo? Blick: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I didn’t really get any details from him. I just got a text afterwards saying ‘I got your clubs.’ And yeah, I mean he looked at them, and they’re OK. But there’s some pretty bad damage to the bag and the irons are pretty beat up. That’s why we only gave her $300, these things are… it looked like he was just hitting rocks down the sidewalk with these golf clubs. So, it’s fine, but the putter looks OK. I’m still going to go down to Scotty Cameron and have them check out the loft, lie and all that. But it looks alright. So as of now, I might have it in play at the Bahamas and the first couple events here. Q: But for everything else, you’re going to play the new clubs? You can’t play any of the damaged clubs? Blick: No, it’s all pretty beat up. I don’t know what he was really doing with all these golf clubs. But Titleist matched all the specs, everything else was a pretty easy transition. It was pretty much just like getting new clubs. But the putter just hasn’t felt quite right yet. Q: You said you’ve had the putter since 2012. Is that a sentimental club for you? Blick: Yeah, I don’t know what it is about it. I know that it doesn’t fit me. I think it’s a little short and I know the lie angle isn’t right because the toe is always up in the air, but it’s one of those things that I’ve literally used for so long, that it’s almost like that’s all I know. I know that it’s not physically perfect for me, but I’ve used it for so long and I’ve seen so many putts go in over the last 7 years that, it just feels good. Q: So what are you going to do with the damaged clubs? I feel like they almost have to go into the Hall-of-Fame at this point. Blick:: Yeah (laughs), I’m trying to find a display case of some sort. They’re sitting in the garage right now. I disinfected everything. I spent like an hour cleaning these things. I actually got a lot of heat on Instagram. A couple people were commenting that it’s like prejudice to assume that homeless people are dirty and that I have to clean the clubs. That was a little weird, but it’s not like I’m going to not clean used golf clubs. They were in his tent for two-and-a-half weeks or whatever. But yeah, I don’t know. They’re in the garage and I’ll probably put them in a case and probably bring them into the house at some point. This whole thing must have been so weird for you. Has it set in yet how weird this is? Blick: You know honestly, the initial losing the clubs took a while to set in. I played the qualifier, then this whole story kind of blew up, doing all those interviews for like a week straight, and then Christmas came around. It really only hit me how cool it was at the end of December, like almost New Years it was like, OK that was a pretty cool story what happened. And then I get back home and the clubs had been found. It’s hard to understand what’s really going on here. Somebody jacked my clubs and just had them in his tent for three weeks. That’s so crazy. Q: So what do you have coming up? Obviously after all this you have like eight starts now so what’s your plan going forward? Blick: I’m going to play in every Web.com Tour event that I can. My plan after Q-School was to take a week off around Christmas and just kind of hang out with the family. And then I got home and I didn’t have any golf clubs, so I was kind of forced to take some time off there. So I ended up taking like two weeks off, which was actually pretty nice. Starting to get back into it, and starting really to prepare for the first couple events. I’m just going to commit to the Web season, and I’ll probably do U.S. Open qualifying down the road. I learned from Canada, two years ago I ended up skipping an event and ended up missing my Web card by like 490 Canadian dollars. That kind of stung. But it was a lesson learned. So I want to play in as many Web events as I can, because at the end of the year – I guess it’s points, but it was dollars and it doesn’t matter how many events you play in I just have to rack up the points. Q: Do you think you’re going to get some attention from the galleries now because you’re the kid who had his clubs stolen? Blick: I don’t know, I never really thought about that. Yeah, I mean maybe. That would be pretty cool, but I don’t know, I never thought about it. Social media is definitely blowing up. These messages I’m getting from random fans are so cool. It’s like random supporting ‘You got this,’ or ‘it just goes to show how you can be’ and it’s been really really cool. People just coming out of the woodwork really, supporting me and sending me positive notes. Q: Your social media following is probably growing a bunch, too, right? Blick: Oh, big time, yeah. It doubled. Like literally it doubled. Q: Coming out of all this you have an opportunity to eventually work yourself up to the PGA TOUR, right? That’s the goal? Blick: Totally. That week at Q-School, I had an OK first round, a pretty good second round, and the third round had some drama. I noticed a crack in my driver. That was really weird. I salvaged an OK round, but, I was sitting in 75th place Saturday night and I really wasn’t down on myself. I guess in a humble way, I just felt like everything was going to work out, and I was going to have a good Sunday. I really wasn’t worried about it at all. And the clubs got jacked, and I was pretty panicked at first but it was still like, I have a chance here. Yea I don’t have my clubs and I was dealt a pretty crappy hand, but we can still go out on Sunday and put a pretty good number together. But yea I really wasn’t too worried about it. It just goes to show you it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re calm. It’s all good. Q: Maybe with everything going on it kind of took your mind off golf and you just went out and made a bunch of birdies. Blick: Actually, yeah. And luckily my whole team was there. My parents and my coach. And a bunch of friends and family. So they took care of the police report and everything. They were great. It was easier for me to just go out and focus on golf and they dealt with all the legal stuff. Q: Well that’s good all that’s been taken care of, and it’s a New Year. Blick: Like you said, I have a chance at the PGA TOUR, and that’s definitely everybody’s goal. We all want to get to the highest level and we all want to compete against the best, and win against the best. So it’s just one step closer, it’s pretty cool.

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