Mickelson hunts for way out of Tiger's shadow

It is a regime of physical and mental preparation which is so demanding, and draining, and, perhaps so potentially conducive to monumental achievement, that for the moment the fine points of the project have to be carefully screened.

"Let me see," he says, "I've been doing it six, seven months, and I don't want to get into the details. But we are talking about strength and conditioning and core work and self-defence and so forth. The keys are speed and strength."

This, you may be surprised to learn, is not a member of the United States Special Forces. He is a professional golfer. But then his challenge is to topple Tiger Woods here at the dawn of another Masters.

It is a task that at times seems to the drain the life out of some of the most technically accomplished players the game has ever known, including this one, Phil Mickelson.

Mickelson, the tall left-hander from California who has won 21 professional tournaments, carries the forlorn burden of being possibly the most gifted golfer never to win a major. It is this which makes his situation in the shadow of Woods particularly haunting, and there are times when, try as he might, he cannot disguise it.

A typical example of this pressure came here this week in the following exchange.

Questioner: "OK, seems like every time you or any other player goes into a room 50 per cent of the questions always either have something to do with Tiger or mention Tiger's name. As a player on Tour, for you specifically, does that have an effect – and do you think it has an effect on all the other guys? Do you ever think: everything's about Tiger?"

Mickelson: "Yeah, you just mentioned his name three times – so that would be like 65 per cent of the time."

The room dissolved in laughter, but there was no smile in Mickelson's eyes. "What you are talking about is just part of professional golf now," he said.

But does it have to soak so profoundly into the psyche of every man who tees up against a 27-year-old who is favoured here by the ridiculous odds of 6-4 to reach the halfway point in his drive to surpass Jack Nicklaus's record haul of 18 majors? Ridiculous odds they may be in the sense that Woods is pitted against 92 rivals who in their own right can do things with a golf ball that in the Middle Ages would probably have been assigned to witchcraft, but they are perhaps not too detached from reality.

The question everyone who has a chance of winning this fabled tournament is asking more deeply than ever before is whether a Woods operating at anywhere near his best is beatable.

If he is, on anything like a consistent basis by an individual challenger, then Ernie Els, the reigning Open champion and a double winner of the US Open, is probably the soundest candidate for the job. The world No 2 at least believes that he is dealing with some of the psychological implications of life under the heel of the Tiger.

Here last year, the 33-year-old joined the rest of the chasing pack in what seemed to resemble nothing so much as a suicide pact. They pushed their games to their limits out of fear that nothing short of this high-risk policy carried a chance of their catching the man at the front. Els, who regained his nerve so brilliantly a few months later at Muirfield, crumbled at Amen Corner.

Now Els says: "I'll try to explain it. I think for a while I went at it the wrong way. I went and played majors against Tiger. And let's face it, Tiger is always going to be there. So if you start playing Tiger on Thursday from the first tee, I think that's the wrong way to go about it. I think you're going to beat yourself up and not play your normal game.

"So what Jos [Vanstiphout, the sports psychologist] and I have been working on is going out there to play the golf course. Everybody's got to play the golf course and if I do it, with the talent I have, I should be there on Sunday afternoon. And then it's a matter of just keeping on doing what you're doing. At times I've done that and it has brought me some success, and when I haven't done it I've failed.

"Yes, it happened here last year. I was trying to chase. I made a bogey on 10 or 11 and I was trying to get going again because I was charged after having such a good front nine and I was thinking of what Tiger might be doing so when I came to the 13th I was also thinking eagle and all that and I sent it into the trees and I was dead."

Dead by the fear and loathing in the Tiger's lair, dead by the accumulating pressure of trying to compete with arguably the greatest sportsman of his age, a freak of nature and will.

Els, and his compatriot Retief Goosen, a US Open winner who was engulfed by Woods when they were paired on the final day last year, both say that they are going to focus not on the phenomenal Tiger but their own possibilities. Goosen says: "He is such a great player that it is hard not to be dominated by him. But you have to try. If you don't you are just beaten before you step on the course."

Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson works to qualify as an honorary member of Delta Force.

Truly, life is a trial in the Age of the Tiger.