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Major disappointment Mickelson still looking for first big win
Posted: Tuesday June 13, 2000 01:29 PM
By Jim Huber, CNNSI.com PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- They come to Pebble Beach and the 100th U.S. Open this week with varied missions. Some just glad to be there, others with the dream of winning. A few are carrying some great expectations. Phil Mickelson is first and foremost. Victories this season at the Buick Invitational, BellSouth Classic and the Colonial, have primed him for this year's event. "Win or lose, what's most enjoyable about playing the tour is having the chance to win on Sunday," said Mickelson who turns 30 this Friday. "I feel as though I've been playing well enough to get myself into contention a good number of times." But no matter how many tournaments he wins, and he has 16 championships in eight seasons on the tour, Mickelsen still has to answer for the one glaring gap on his resume. For the moment, he, David Duval and Colin Montgomerie share the auspicious honor of being the best players never having won a major. It's a distinction Mickelsen looks at as a compliment. Not as a cocnern. "It is, it's very flattering because there have been a good number of players who have never won a major, and to be considered either the best or the second best to have not is complimentary." Last year, Mickelsen played the U.S. Open at Pinehurst with the golf world's attention on him. He was in contention, but says he would have withdrawn had his wife gone into labor with their first child. Instead, daughter Amanda was born the day after Mickelsen finished one stroke behind the late Payne Stewart. 
But it's not the spotlight that Mickelsen feels makes winning in a major more difficult than a regular weekend on tour. "I find that in a regular tour event, I can force things or try to make things happen and make birdies to win golf tournaments," he says, "and I've won 16 tournaments because of that. But in a major, you have to be more patient. You try to get aggressive and the miss is so severe that you're making bogey or double. That's what I've been fighting." There will be no late stages of pregnancy hovering this week for him Only his 30th birthday on Friday to remind him that the expectations of taking his game to a higher level are growing older.
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