Most-Picked Players: U.S. Open

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First his former caddie, Jim Mackay, got into the foot-soldier game. Now Phil Mickelson has. Mickelson, tournament host for this week's The American Express in Palm Desert, California, wore a mask and a microphone to emcee The American Express Charity Challenge at PGA West on Wednesday. Playing alternate shot, Paul Casey, with singer Jake Owen, and Tony Finau, with retired soccer star Landon Donovan, raised $1 million for Coachella Valley charities. Casey and Owen, a former competitive junior golfer, easily won the match. Mickelson got off the most one-liners. "I'm going to watch and talk smack," he said after the first-tee introductions, "which is what I do better than play right now, so let's have at it." Most of his needle came at his own expense. On the first tee he handed Owen a $100 bill, eliciting laughter. The move was a reference to Owen jokingly complaining about the quality of the golf in The Match, an earlier made-for-TV event between Mickelson and Tiger Woods, and Mickelson giving him his money back. Owen, however, played well, despite making nothing on the greens. Donovan struggled with his wedges. Mickelson spent the two and a half hours telling stories, trying to coach Donovan, explaining shots as they came up, reading greens, and taking more light jabs mostly at himself. "I'm shorter and crooked, and I still hit driver," the 50-year-old Hall of Famer said by way of urging Finau to hit driver as much as possible. Later, Mickelson asked with mock seriousness, "Does that get tiring playing from the fairway all the time?" Mickelson is not switching careers to TV like his ex-caddie Mackay; instead, he said earlier Wednesday, he plans to play the PGA TOUR's West Coast swing. He will then evaluate whether to continue competing on TOUR, where he has 44 titles, or move over to the 50-and-over PGA TOUR Champions, the circuit where he already has two victories in two career starts. The host was brought into Wednesday's action with two driving contests, both against Finau, a closest-to-the-pin contest (Casey), and a short-game contest (Casey) - all for the two teams' chosen charities. He did not win any of them. He was admittedly stiff, and also was hooked up to wires, wearing a mask, and admitted Finau is untouchable with the driver, anyway. "Ten years ago, I was at the Callaway test center," Mickelson said as he kept things moving along, "and you and your brother Gipper were there, and you were hitting nasty bombs there, and you broke the golf ball. You broke it. Literally broke it. It had a 212 mph threshold. I've never done - that unless I bladed it, like a wedge or something." At the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park last August, Mickelson spent more than an hour in the CBS booth with Nick Faldo and Jim Nantz. He exchanged zingers with Faldo while the veteran Nantz kept everything running smoothly. But for the Charity Challenge, which aired on Golf Channel and PGA TOUR LIVE, Mickelson had to work mostly solo. At the 14th hole, when asked why he wasn't giving even more advice to amateurs Donovan and Owen, Mickelson said, "I mean it's a little difficult because when you see the skill level with the wedge of Landon, the beautiful one he hit on 10, the horrific one he hit on 13, you really don't know where to go with it. Oh, you heard that, Landon? My bad." At the 15th hole, Owen said he'd been drinking more coffee lately, which naturally was followed by Mickelson recommending his specially blended Coffee for Wellness. "When you drink it," he said, "you won't have any crash later on." Donovan, newer to the game, was sketchy on the Rules and kept asking when to concede a putt. "You'd still watch it," Mickelson said of Casey's upcoming short birdie putt at the 15th hole, "but 98.7 percent of the time he's going to make that. You're nice and classy, so I know you want to give it. I want to watch it." (Casey made it.) Mickelson razzed Donovan for hitting his tee shot in the water at the island par-3 17th hole (Alcatraz), but then seemed to remember how many thousands of balls are drowned there. "Sorry," he said. "It's late in the day, I'm getting a little slap-happy." Team Finau/Donovan raised $340,000 for Youth Development & Education in the Coachella Valley while Team Casey/Owen raised $660,000 for Health & Wellness.

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MEXICO CITY – Justin Thomas felt tired in the legs as he stood up to begin preparations for the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship on Tuesday morning. He wasn’t worried. He’s not worried about losing a four-shot lead and finishing second to J.B. Holmes at the weather-interrupted Genesis Open last weekend, either, in case you were wondering. “It will bother me the rest of my life, 100 percent it will,â€� Thomas said at Club de Golf Chapultepec. “There are tournaments I didn’t win my rookie year that still bother me and that was a lot worse than that, so I’m sure that will bother me. But in terms of being over it, it’s done with.â€� Was he angry? No. “More shocked and upset,â€� he said. All those bogeys, the final-round 75, let his pursuers back in it, and Holmes (70) took advantage. They were among those forced to play 34 holes on Sunday, when gusts reached north of 30 mph. It caught up to Thomas on the greens, as he three-putted the 10th and 14th holes and four-putted the 13th. It was, to his point, a shocking result, what with Thomas having closed out six of eight tournaments in which he had at least a share of the 54-hole lead. “I feel like I know what I did,â€� he said. “I just didn’t — I played well, I just didn’t make the putts and I just made the mistakes that in the past that I usually don’t do when I’m playing with a lead.â€� Now it’s time to turn the page. Thomas has flirted with winning in Mexico. He was T5 two years ago, his week highlighted by a hole-in-one. And he lost to Phil Mickelson in extra holes last year, but not before hitting the shot of the tournament, a hole-out from the fairway on the last hole of regulation. He planned on only nine holes Tuesday, followed by rest and treatment for his legs, then maybe nine more Wednesday. The course has not changed, even if the sunny, 80-degree weather has. Thomas will take it after a dreary West Coast Swing punctuated by cold, wet and windy L.A. “Last week was one of the most bizarre weeks I’ve been a part of,â€� he said. “You don’t know what day it is, you don’t know what round you’re in, and it was a lot.â€� The scenery, the altitude, the newly allowed short pants in practice rounds (Thomas was not partaking Tuesday), the presence of Tiger Woods for the first time — all of these things will help him forget last week. Asked if he thinks more about his losses or his wins, Thomas said, “I hate to lose more than I like to win, if that answers the question.â€� He allowed there have been players whose careers might be derailed by a tough loss like the one he suffered at the Genesis. “But I would like to think I’m a little bit stronger than that,â€� he said, “that this isn’t going to have an impact on my career.â€� Given that Thomas, 25, already has nine TOUR wins, has won the FedExCup and a major, and has played in the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup, that seems very, very possible. Losing a late lead? Hey, it happens. “There’s a chance I could win this week,â€� he said, “and nobody would talk about it ever again.â€�

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