U.S. Open Fans Get Behind Phil, Duval, Rocco and More

By Vic Williams, Live from the U.S. Open | posted June 19, 2009

Just another day at the Open: The skies finally cleared, and lots of crazy stuff started happening. David Duval rose from the dead. So did Todd Hamilton and Adam Scott. Rocco Mediate thought, "What the hell, I'll contend in my second straight U.S. Open." An amateur led for a while, the sun started drying out the fairways and the greens stayed relatively soft, leading to dart-throwing and low scores and a slew of head-snapping lead changes. Then things got Weir-d as the "other" Masters-winning lefty caught fire, sniffing a 62 for before carding 64. Then came some Glover guy and a Barnes-burner, both journeyman at the top of the heap, one stroke apart as the sun settled over Manhattan and another rainy day appeared to be on its way.

But, most of all, there was mud. Everywhere. Caked on shoes and splashed on calves. And that led to slips, slides, gingerly baby steps down Bethpage's many steep hillsides — and comments from the peanut gallery.

"I saw a lady fall right there in the mud the other day," said a lubed-up local toward the end of an eventful U.S. Open Friday. "She was just layin' there, and I looked at her and told her, 'Get up!'"

A joke, a harsh one, but a good clue to how the world's rowdiest golf fans behave when the national championship swings around to the greater New York area every few years. If they sniff weakness in a player or even a fellow fan, they pounce. But if they catch a whiff of someone giving it their all, especially on the field of play, they champion that athlete loudly and with a remarkable mix of deep sports knowlege and raw, sometimes guttural humor.

And if your name is Phil Mickelson, they adulate you beyond all reason.

I still don't quite understand why New Yorkers love Phil so much, especially the blue-collar contingent. Here's a guy who's never lived anywhere near New York, who makes upwards of $40 million a year on the course and off, whose upper-middle-class upbringing in Southern California is as far removed from what I imagine to be the average Long Islander's day-to-day experience as Bethpage Black is from Augusta National. If anything, Tiger Woods' beginnings were much closer to what we think of as rank-and-file middle-class American life. Not that New Yawkahs don't respect Tiger. They do, but it's more distant somehow. Tiger is the admired machine; Phil is the smilin', cap-tipping Everyman whose swing sometimes betrays him and whose putter seems to grow a mind of its own. Such things happen to Tiger, too — indeed, they happened to him today as he finished 4-over for his final four holes, and overall, a full 10 shots behind Mike Weir after Round 1 was completed.

Maybe it's because with Phil, living on the edge is business as usual.

These folks love that kind of guy, and they took it to a new level today under blessedly (and, it appears, very temporary) sunny skies in Farmingdale, N.Y. The crowds around Phil and his fellow major winners Ernie Els and Retief Goosen were the largest of the event so far, larger even than Tiger's throngs. And Phil ate it up, whereas Tiger would never acknowledge such goings-on while engaged in battle. By the time the day of somewhat disjointed but very exciting golf ended some 13 hours after it began, Mickelson had taken his minions through all kinds of highs and lows — birdie streaks and lunkheaded doubles, missed gimmes and sunken bombs, hacks out of the hay and epic drives to center cut. He and close to half the field ended up cramming nearly 30 holes into the day, while Tiger and his side of the draw have yet to tee it up in their second round.

Perhaps, that pans out as an advantage, but keep in mind that Tiger still has 54 regulation holes to play, and I'm insisting that even 10 shots back at this point he can make anything happen. He's not out of it. Nor is Phil, of course; he's five shots back, and if he can figure out how to keep from pushing putts and gear down his tee shots to a fairway-finding level, he may damn-well win this thing, at long last.

Imagine what the crowds would do then.

Other bright lights still figure big. Sergio, for one. Weir, big time — nobody is hitting approaches with more confidence. The left-for-dead Duval, who made it all the way to No. 1 a decade ago, isn't out of it by any measure. I'm just hoping for a Top 10 for him — it could revive a career that's been sadly derailed. And what about Anthony Kim, who seems to be zeroing in on some measure of the magic that followed him a year ago. Or Mediate, a definite crowd favorite his ownself, who refuses to take his long putter and go away. A large, active foreign contingent is lurking, too, beyond Sergio. Guys like the "Hansen/Hanson Brothers," one a Swede, the other a Dane, who played together and drew all kinds of "Slap Shot" jokes from the crowd. Or Rory McIlroy, who plays with refreshing fearlessness and a whiff of Mickelsonian brio.

So many storylines. So many possibilities. So much mud. This is a wide-open affair, and it'll just get tastier (and wetter?) for the next two or three days. I'll be back out there again tomorrow, Twitter-phone in hand and ears open for chewable quotes from 50,000 of Phil's closest friends — and, again, one eye watching for that inevitable Tiger surge.

Vic Williams is editor and publishing partner of Fairways + Greens, a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to golf, travel and lifestyle for the West and beyond. He has written thousands of stories on golf and will cover every facet of the game right here, primarily travel but also the major tours, equipment, personalities and more. Contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

U.S. OPEN GALLERY
Photos by Joann Dost