With a change in instructors and a retooled swing,Phil Mickelson is striking the ball better than ever, as evidenced by his impressive victory against the strongest field in the game at the Players

	Harmon instructed Mickelson (above) on shortening his swing, but there was nothing wrong with Phil's short game. Robert Beck/SI

On Sunday afternoon, moments before he stepped to the 1st tee at the Players Championship for the most momentous round he has played in a while, Phil Mickelson offered his new swing coach a soul handshake and a manly slap on the back. "Thanks for everything, Butch," said Mickelson, and those four little words added yet another layer of intrigue to the ongoing melodrama that is his career. Butch would be Claude Harmon Jr., known far and wide by his nickname and for his work as Tiger Woods's former instructor, most notably during Woods's run from 1999 through 2002, the most dominant golf ever played.

Shortly after pressing flesh with Harmon, Mickelson put a stranglehold on the tournament, playing a nearly perfect round en route to a victory that was a lot more lopsided than the final two-stroke margin would indicate. The performance exorcised at last the ghosts of Mickelson's disastrous finish at last year's U.S. Open. It also helped him reclaim his rightful place at No. 2 in the World Ranking, to say nothing of his role as the only real threat to Woods's supremacy. Just as important, Mickelson's rock-solid play was much-needed validation that he's on the right track with Harmon in his effort to build a shorter, tighter, more reliable swing.

"What's most exciting is I feel as if we're just getting started," Mickelson, 36, said following his 31st career victory, which was worth a PGA Tour record $1.62 million. "This is only week number three [working with Harmon]. In three months how much am I going to progress? In three years where am I going to be? I've seen an immediate difference in three weeks, and I can't wait for another three weeks to go by and to start getting ready for the U.S. Open."

Ah, the Open, the tournament that is to Mickelson what the Masters was to Greg Norman -- an annual psychodrama defined by heartbreaking near misses. Mickelson has finished second at four of the last eight national championships, and two blown opportunities have been particularly brutal: his double bogey on the 71st hole at Shinnecock Hills in 2004 and the instantly infamous double last year on the final hole at Winged Foot. That last train wreck had a dramatic effect on Mickelson's career, putting him in a funk that lasted the rest of last year, including a dead-man-walking performance at the Ryder Cup.