SAN DIEGO -- For a while, it seemed as though she had been swallowed up whole. Always a happy presence along the gallery ropes when her husband plays, she had disappeared without a trace for five hours before eventually bobbing back to the surface.
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| Where's Waldo -- or Amy Mickelson -- in the throng at Torrey Pines? (Getty Images) |
By 8 a.m., fans were lined up a half-dozen deep along both sides of the first fairway to see their hometown boy, Mickelson, tour Torrey Pines alongside the guys on either side of him in the world rankings, No. 1 Tiger Woods and No. 3 Adam Scott.
Speaking of people surrounding you, imagine what it was like to be Mrs. Mickelson, all of perhaps 5-foot-3, standing in a forest of fans often a foot taller, all of them craning their necks to see the Three Amigos roll past.
"Yeah, it was kind of hard to see out there," she said.
Which is why we did the dirty work for the rest of you.
The pairing, first announced last week, had nearly consumed most of the energy and attention of this week's event, and rightly so. But the opening round at the 108th Open was like attending a Mardi Gras parade -- a lot of the more colorful activity was happening outside the actual parade route.
From 8 a.m. onward, it was a day that was memorable not so much because the players torched the course with stellar shot-making -- none of them broke par -- but because the pairing was so unique and fans had been anticipating the return of the Open to Southern California for the first time in 60 years. No offense, guys, but we're mainly blowing off the blow-by-blow details of who made double-bogeys and birdies. It was the color, the circumstance and scene that the fans will remember longest.
First hole
Mickelson, at 8 a.m. sharp, walks into an arena that felt a bit like it had been erected for a heavyweight fight. Fans in the 18th bleachers, which faced the opposite direction, were lined up on the top row and staring backward, awaiting the arrival of the trio of stars, but especially the homegrown mega-star.
Too bad they had all missed what had happened a moment earlier. In what Mickelson surely hopes is not an omen, the two video screens erected in the practice area were showing a taped loop of old Open highlights as he warmed up. Not just any clips, either -- it was his final-hole collapse at Winged Foot two years ago.
At the tee, Mickelson headed directly to the box of scorecards kept at the microphone stand used by the man handling player introductions over the public-address system as fans screamed, "speech, speech." Happy to oblige, he stepped to the mic and muttered something inaudible, but the sound was turned off. The rest of the day had amplification to spare.
Scott arrived next, shaking hands with everybody as a lefty. A few weeks back, a friend had slammed Scott's hand in a car door in London, breaking a bone above his right pinkie finger. Woods breezed in and immediately began piling on the grief as Scott extended his left hand.
