Golf roundup
Mickelson cruises to easy victory in FBR Open SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) – Despite shots that sailed into the desert and in the water, Phil Mickelson is a winner again, on a course that still feels like home.
Mickelson won the FBR Open by five strokes on Sunday, the largest margin of victory in his 24 PGA Tour triumphs.
“It’s a lot of fun for us to come back,” he said. “Even though we moved away three years ago, we still consider it home.”
Mickelson’s adventures off the fairway were offset by brilliant shots that led to four birdies in a final round 3-under 68. He never led by fewer than three strokes on Sunday, then capped his round with a 26-foot birdie putt from the fringe on the 18th to the wild cheers of the friendly throng.
“I wasn’t really trying to make it,” Mickelson said. “I was trying to just get it close, and it fell in.”
Afterward, his daughters, 5-year-old Amanda and 3-year-old Sophia, rushed to hug their dad on the 18th green.
“Daddy, there’s treats after,” the youngest one said.
The victory in the $5.2 million event was worth $936,000, about $700,000 more than Mickelson earned when he won the same tournament nine years ago.
With chants of “A-S-U!” and “Go Lefty!” from the crowd everywhere he went, Mickelson finished at 17-under 267 on the Tournament Players Club course. Scott McCarron and Kevin Na, at 21 the youngest player on the PGA tour, tied for second at 272. McCarron shot his second consecutive 65, and Na had a 69. Na played in the final group with Mickelson and faltered before rallying with birdies on the 14th and 17th for his best finish in his two years on the tour.
Steve Flesch, Tim Herron and David Toms finished at 273. Toms would have finished in second place but double-bogeyed the 18th.
“To have this win in a tournament I value and cherish so much,” Mickelson said, “it really means a lot. It’s the first time I’ve won since the Masters, too.”
A three-time NCAA champion at Arizona State who lived in Scottsdale until December 2001, Mickelson won the FBR – formerly the Phoenix Open – for the second time. He was just 25 when he won in a playoff with another tour youngster, Justin Leonard, in 1996.
Mickelson became the first player in five PGA Tour tournaments this year to protect a 54-hole lead, the longest such streak since 1976, when third-round leaders did not win the first five PGA Tour events of the year.
Heineken Classic
MELBOURNE, Australia – Australia’s Craig Parry ended Ernie Els’ three-year reign in the Heineken Classic, holing a 12-foot birdie putt on the fourth hole of a playoff with countryman Nick O’Hern.
Parry closed with a 1-under 70 to match O’Hern (71) at 14-under 270.
Cancer survivor Jarrod Lyle, a 23-year-old Australian, bogeyed the 18th to tie for third with England’s Simon Dyson at 13 under. Lyle, who spent a year in hospital undergoing chemo-therapy for leukemia in 1999, shot 71, and Dyson had a 68. Els shot a 70 to finish at 12 under.