Woods Thinks He Has a Chance at US Open; Mickelson Has Not Given Up on It

Tiger Woods has not won a tournament since 2013, when he won five. Phil Mickelson has a drought dating to the 2013 British Open. They are the two players most golf fans would love to see in the victory circle at the U.S. Open. Both believe they can win this week.

Woods rested his case by saying, “I've got three of these.”

He has a point—although he has not played up to his legacy in recent months.

“You saw what I did at Torrey and Phoenix,” he said. “And the fact that I came back and did what I did at Augusta, as I said, I was very proud of that.”

At the Masters, he shot 73-69-68-73 and finished 17th after missing two cuts in appearances earlier in the year at the Waste Management Open and the Farmer’s Insurance Open.

“If you look at how I played at Phoenix and Torrey, I'm sure most people have thought I was probably crazy to think I could probably win the Masters. But I really felt like I could. I had a chance; I just didn't get it done,” he added.

At Chambers Bay, Woods said putting will be a key.

“You're going to have to make some serious lag putts out there and get them close. You're going to have up over mounds and sometimes 70-, 80-footers,” he explained. “And you're going to have to try to lag it up there, and you're going to have to try to make short ones from probably eight foot and in.”

Woods took the advice that USGA executive director Mike Davis mentioned in May about visiting early to heart.

“I'm thankful that Mike had mentioned that you probably have to see this place more than just tournament week,” he said. But Woods always visits the sites of majors the week prior—if not earlier than that.

With an afternoon tee time on Thursday, Woods plans to watch some golf in the morning to study the setup. It could work to his advantage.

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“It's going to be interesting to see what Mike does. I'm kind of happy that I'm playing actually in the afternoon the first day, get a chance to watch what some of the guys do in the morning to get a feel for it and see what's going on,” he said.

Phil Mickelson doesn’t let the past close calls at U.S. Opens bother him.

“I've always been somebody, ever since I was a kid, that got motivated by failure, that worked harder because of failure,” Mickelson said. “Some people get discouraged by that, and it almost pushes them away. But for me, it's been a motivator to continue to work harder and get over that hump, whether it was trying to win my first major championship that took significantly longer than I thought it would, whether it's trying to win an Open championship or whether it's trying to win a U.S. Open championship.”

Despite the facts that he celebrated his 45th birthday this week and hasn’t had a victory in nearly two years, he doesn’t think age is a real factor for him.

“If I continue to do what I've done the last eight months or so, there's no reason why I couldn't play at a high level for a while,” he said. “The last two years, my technique and my form has not been what I expect it to be, what it's been throughout the course of my career. It's been very frustrating.”

His take on the golf course is that it favors someone with his particular talents.

“Having success at Muirfield (at the British Open), when the course was dry and firm and fast and brown, much like Chambers Bay, is that that gives me much more confidence that I'm going to play well,” he added. “I think the other thing, too, about Chambers Bay is you don't have to be perfect. You can miss shots and reasonably still salvage pars, rely on short game.”

He also got some local advice two weeks ago.

“I had one of the local caddies, a gentleman named Rick, who came and helped me,” Mickelson said. “I asked a lot of questions from him about what his thoughts were on the golf course as we walked around.”

According to Mickelson, he gained a lot of insight on how to play the course. He didn’t elaborate except to say he got “lots of specifics, yeah. Very specific, absolutely.”

Kathy Bissell is a Golf Writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand or from official interview materials from the PGA Tour, USGA or PGA of America.