AUGUSTA — It took only nine holes Saturday to serve up the entire Phil Mickelson pu-pu platter of shot making, and to give this Masters Sunday the focal point it needed almost as much as sunshine.
Mickelson’s back-nine 30 on Saturday rocketed him up the leaderboard, just one stroke off third-round leader Peter Hanson. In the details of that late-afternoon 66 were the components of what has made him a three-time Masters champion and at the age of 41 still one of the rare must-see golfers in existence.
Simply put, Mickelson pulls stuff out of his, ahem, bag that most players either can’t or wouldn’t dare.
He pulled the putter on the par-5 13th on Saturday and drained a slo-mo 20-foot eagle putt that would deceive almost anyone else. But, Phil knows Augusta National.
“I’ve hit that putt so many times. I know that it breaks a lot at the hole. I know it’s slow up that hill and gave it a little extra and still barely got it to the lip, and it just fell in,” he said.
He pulled the 64-degree wedge from behind the green at the par-5 15th and hit a dangerous high flop shot on to a surface that tilted away from him, toward water. He might as well have picked up the ball and dropped it four feet from the hole.
“He has a few shots around the green that I’m not even close to,” Hanson said.
Mickelson’s caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, knew that one was going to be close as soon as he heard the pure click of club striking ball perfectly — “the sound that you and I can’t make,” he said.
As a parting note, Mickelson stood with both feet in the pine straw, pulled a 7-iron and carved a 198-yard approach out of what passes for rough here to 15 feet from the pin. The putt was a veritable gimme.
The back nine is Mickelson’s mistress. While No. 18 has ranked the second-hardest hole through three rounds, Mickelson has birdied it all three days.
That’s how a guy who was 4 over after his first 10 holes way back on Thursday finds himself in the last pairing Sunday.
For Mickelson, that is the equivalent of reporting to St. Peter’s gates. “I love nothing more than being in the last group on Sunday at the Masters. It’s the greatest thing in professional golf,” he said.
This is the fourth time that Mickelson will go off last on a Sunday at the Masters. He won each of the previous three times.
Paired with him will be Hanson, the unknown soldier in this march. He will attempt to plug into the energy that Mickelson creates, much as he said he did playing one group ahead of him Saturday.
“You hear the crowd going wild when he made eagle, it kind of helped me on 14. I feel him breathing down my neck a little bit and manage to get mine close on 14 and picked up another birdie on 15,” Hanson said.
“I’m sorry I was helping him out,” Mickelson said, smiling. “It didn’t look like he needed it.” Indeed, Hanson’s 65 was the day’s low round.
As the two pair up, it will be putters at 20 paces — Mickelson and Hanson are No. 1 and 2 in fewest putts through the first three rounds.
“I just feel really confident in the way I’ve been playing and the way I’ve been putting in this setting,” Mickelson said.
Make no mistake that Mickelson is in charge of Sunday’s roar-making responsibilities. The racket he created Saturday was considerable, a noise described by his caddie as something like a storm surge.
“On 13, you are little bit away from the crowd. After that putt, it’s really cool how that wall of sound hits you on a delay,” Mackay said.
And to think that this week started as a supposed two-man show between Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. How’s that working now?
Woods is tearing up the course, but not in the expected way. Entering the last round at 3 over, he will be most remembered for his intemperate reaction to some cockeyed shot. For the record, his best snit during Saturday’s 72 came at No. 13 tee, where he pounded his driver on the ground, digging up a lemming-sized chunk of sod.
McIlroy began Saturday one shot off the lead and staggered in 10 shots in arrears by day’s end. He was paired with Sergio Garcia and the two of them made a complete mess of the day — combining to go 8 over (McIlroy 77, Garcia 75). Their only consolation was the hug they gave each other on the 12th green after both made birdies on the par-3.
After taking his usual ceremonial second-round lead, 52-year-old Fred Couples settled back into a more comfortable place, shooting 75 and standing seven shots off the lead.
Saturday is moving day as they say around the clubhouse grill, and this one was eventful. When they shook up the leaderboard up like a big Etch A Sketch and redrew the tournament, there were left seven players within five shots of Hanson’s lead. Included in the bunch were a couple of past winners of majors — Louis Oosthuizen (7 under) and Padraig Harrington (4 under), one who needs a major to shore up his global rep — Lee Westwood, and one who is still trying to make a bigger splash here then he did as an amateur 14 years ago — Matt Kuchar.
Then there is the one who invites you all to watch him, to cheer and to sit on the edge of that oft-asked question: What will Phil do next?
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