Phil Mickelson: Recap and Review of Lefty's PGA Championship Peformance

Phil Mickelson bounced back from a shaky one-over-73 first round that sent him to a tie for 66th. Today, Lefty managed to shoot one-under, just enough to stay at even-par overall and to share the 11th place, 55 spots better than yesterday.

On Thursday, Mickelson opened with a bogey on the par-four first. This was the result of a slice that found the gallery. His noon tee time didn't help much.

Then on the second he amended his error and notched his first birdie. It seemed like he just had an unfortunate start as he sank another birdie on the fifth. However, he started to lose control of his tee shots and couldn't find the fairway as much as he would want.

Trouble continued for an errant Mickelson on the par-five seventh, where he had his second bogey of the day. Phil fought and recovered in the next hole with a birdie. Little did Lefty know it would be his last one.

He couldn't keep the momentum going, but still managed to make the turn at one-under. The back nine was tough, with a couple of bogeys (10 and 14).

Lefty hit eight out of 14 fairways during his opening round. Probably the worse mistake was that he didn't take advantage of the wind not blowing as hard as expected when he was playing the front nine.

Today things were not much different for Mickelson. He opened with back-to-back birdies (10 and 11). After two pars, he sank his first bogey on the par-three 14th. The rest of the back nine were steady for Phil, who missed a bunch of fairways before getting a birdie the second and finishing with a bogey on the ninth.

Today, Mickelson had eight greens in regulation and only hit seven fairways. So what does this mean? Well, for starters, that he has a mean short game—22 one-putts in two days—and if he manages to put all the parts of his game together he will be a player to follow.

Currently, Phil trails Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh and Carl Pettersson by four, and with 36 holes to go, Lefty can make it happen.

Furthermore, a victory here would mean his fifth major title—second at the PGA Championship—and his first one since he claimed the 2010 U.S. Open.

Phil says…

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"If I'm within four shots or so heading into the weekend, that's a really good position where I can actually feel my game get better as the week's gone on."

"I think the great thing about this course is if you play well and you hit good shots, you can make pars, you can make some birdies.  And if you don't, you're going to make some big numbers, because it really does reward good shots and it penalizes bad ones."

(via ASAPsports).

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