Mickelson's nine, and other mysteries

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After two jaw-dropping circuits of the back nine Friday and Saturday, and a one-stroke lead, Tiger Woods would appear to be poised to win the U.S. Open. But if there's one pairing that worked out well for the field, it's pairing him with the icy Englishman, Lee Westwood. Foreigners have won the past four U.S. Opens, and there's good reason for that: the European game lends itself more to the kind of precision and accuracy that the U.S. Open always aspires to feature, and also the kind of steely-nerved players that Europe produces.

Westwood has had no double bogeys through three rounds. Tiger has at least two.

Tiger is obviously in a lot of knee pain, which affects driving most of all, but he's also extremely athletic. I remember two Masters ago when he was going to break his club on a swing from behind a tree. He followed through perfectly anyway, knowing full well that once he hit the tree the club would snap and rip his hands and wrists up. That told me he's fairly fearless about the consequence of pain from a swing. Though he did obviously cut quite a bit on his drive at 18 yesterday.

The irony is that he'll go for less distance and perhaps find more driving accuracy the more he favors the knee; his driving has been awful all three days until late in the day when he really starts to favor it.

Rocco Mediate playing a pairing ahead of Tiger will also work to settle Mediate down a bit. He's likely having flashbacks from Augusta 2006 this morning. He wanted to be in the final pairing but I think it's to his advantage that he isn't, although he'll have enormous galleries anyway, as many spectators late in the day will do the every-other-hole thing to post up for the final two pairings.

Course marshals down south have done a great job of making the course play right at par, haven't they? I've heard they've moistened it just enough each night to get it to play the same way each day.

And did you see Mickelson's nine on 13? It looked like the practice range out there, with him hitting the same shot three straight times...

Well, Justin Hicks didn't last. That phone number we mentioned below won't have to be changed for now.