When Phil Mickelson began the 2018-19 PGA Tour season at the Safeway Open in October, he said he was going to trim his schedule and some tournaments might not be happy about it.
His hometown event at Torrey Pines may feel the first pinch.
As of Tuesday morning, Mickelson had yet to commit to the Farmers Insurance Open scheduled for next week. The deadline is Friday. The circumstance is highly unusual because the native San Diegan has always been among the early entrants for Torrey Pines.
Mickelson’s commitment usually arrives sometime in December, according to Farmers Open Tournament Director Peter Ripa.
Ripa said he has yet to hear from Mickelson or his representatives.
“I’ve reached out and haven’t gotten any response, one way or another,” Ripa said.
Messages to Mickelson’s representatives on Tuesday weren’t immediately returned.
Maybe Mickelson — who is entered in this week’s Desert Classic in La Quinta — has every intention to play and hasn’t gotten around to officially entering. Or possibly he has decided there are other tournaments in which he has a better chance to contend.
If Mickelson opts to skip the Farmers Open, it will break a streak of 28 consecutive years he has played in the tournament, which is about 20 miles from his boyhood home and 12 from his current residence in Rancho Santa Fe.
Mickelson competed three times as an amateur, including 1991 and ’92, and won his first event as a pro on tour in 1993 in what was then the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines.
At the Safeway Open, the 48-year-old Mickelson said he planned to cut back on his schedule because he found it difficult to maintain his focus, especially in consecutive weeks.
He didn’t mention it, but he also has to manage the effects and treatment for psoriatic arthritis
“I love what I do,” Mickelson said in Napa in October. “But now, as opposed to playing the tournaments you’re expected to play in or whatever, now I’m going to play in the tournaments that I like, that are best for me, even if it doesn’t make sense or people have a problem with it.
“I’m able to play at a high level, but it’s so difficult without physical and mental sharpness, to play at a high level. It doesn’t come easy anymore. I need to recover.
“As I looked at my schedule next year (2019), and the way some of the tournaments are, yeah, there will be some that I miss that people will be upset about, but I’m not going to worry about it.”
Though his hometown tournament might seem like a surprising choice to cut, it’s not when a number of factors are considered.
It seems likely Mickelson will skip at least one of the tournaments on the mainland West Coast Swing, because if he doesn’t, he’d play six in a row: at La Quinta, San Diego, Phoenix, Pebble Beach, Los Angeles and Mexico City. The latter is where he won a World Golf Championships event last year to end a six-year victory drought.
“You can’t keep (continuously) digging into the golfing batteries (at Mickelson’s age),” CBS commentator Nick Faldo said in an interview with the Union-Tribune on Tuesday.
Mickelson, a 49-time tour winner and World Golf Hall of Famer, has captured all five events on the West Coast Swing multiple times — for a total of 14 victories — but Torrey Pines is where he’s experienced his longest dry spell. He hasn’t won on the cliffside courses in La Jolla since the redesign of the South Course before the ’02 tournament.
He’d previously captured back-to-back titles in 2000 and ’01. Since ’02, Mickelson has five top-eight finishes at Torrey, but his last came as a runner-up in 2011. Since then, he’s missed the cut twice, withdrawn once and has a best finish of a tie for 14th in 2017.
“He doesn’t like the greens, does he?” Faldo said. “That’s the real bottom line. I think he feels handicapped there, even though it’s his hometown. That might have a lot to do with it.”
Mickelson last won at the Desert Classic in 2004, Phoenix in ’13, Pebble Beach in ’12 and Riviera in ’09.
Last year, after missing the cut in La Quinta and tying for 45th at Torrey Pines, Mickelson went on a tear, tying for fifth at Phoenix, second at Pebble Beach and sixth at Riviera, followed by the WGC win in Mexico City.
Throw in losing the chance to do the North Course renovation by a legal technicality, and if there’s not bad blood, there may be a bad taste in Mickelson’s mouth about Torrey Pines, where the courses are now barely recognizable to those he grew up playing.
Staff writer Bryce Miller contributed to this report.
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