SAN DIEGO -- Larry Curtis was both staked out and stoked. He already had received a temporary mark on his backside -- now he wanted a permanent one on the souvenir that caused it.
 | |
|
Phil Mickelson has been known to interact with fans during play ... (Getty Images) |
He'd been patiently standing along the autograph line at a recent PGA Tour stop for around 30 minutes, waiting for Phil Mickelson to finish playing the third round, whereupon he would fast be engulfed by hundreds of Sharpie-wielding fans in search of Lefty's ubiquitous John Hancock.
Curtis was determined to get an early leg up, because in his hand was a white sphere more valuable to him than a shiny pearl. It was a Callaway golf ball, which he said he'd been given a few months earlier when Mickelson clipped him in the upper leg with an errant shot.
An unabashed Mickelson fan, Curtis, a bushy-haired 42-year-old from South Carolina, was hoping his longtime hero would sign the ball for his posterior's posterity. It was a booty-for-booty prize.
"I sort of wish he had hit me in the head instead, because then he might have given me something really, really cool," Curtis laughed.
It might take a hard head, a crash helmet and earplugs to survive this week at the U.S. Open. The approachable San Diego native has forever attracted a legion of devoted fans, but the Mickelsonic boom could be washed out not by the ever-present military jets zooming overhead, but the cacophony of Tiger Woods' boisterous troops.
With the game's two biggest draws paired in the opening rounds, Torrey Pines Golf Course will be an outdoor den of din as fans of the game's two biggest draws line up along miles of gallery ropes to squawk for their favorites, who tee off at 8:06 a.m. local time Thursday.
So, at around 8:07, when the first moron of the day bellows, "You da man," he'll need to be more specific. Their fans will stand shoulder to shoulder, but not arm in arm. They'll be yelping simultaneously, but hardly in harmony. They'll walk the same course, but there is no common ground.
This is the national championship of our 50 states, but fans pledge allegiance to only one star on the flag.
"You can definitely see there are two camps," said two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, who will play in the jet-wash directly behind the feature grouping. "Tiger camp and Phil camp."
This time, the campers are sharing the same tent and the tone shall likewise be pitched. As with blood types, they are committed to the corpuscles and don't necessarily mix well. Watching Mickelson and Woods is like rooting for the Yankees or Red Sox, McDonald's or Burger King. The fans of this pair are as mutually exclusive as, well, the term mutually exclusive.
Don't take my word for it. A few weeks back in Charlotte, Mickelson was signing autographs for every fan in sight as 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy was holding court nearby on the demographics the duo tends to attract. At times, Ogilvy could barely be heard above the clamor of Mickelson's herd 10 yards away.
"Tiger's fans are a broader spectrum of age and sex," Ogilvy said. "Most of Phil's fans are between 18-55 and golf people. Tiger gets people who have never been to a golf tournament before.
