OLIVER HOLT: Phil Mickelson has changed and looks a hollow man who has been banished to the margins

For one day, and perhaps for one day only, a hero came in from the cold at the Masters on Thursday.

In the sunshine of early afternoon, they were waiting for Phil Mickelson on the first tee. A pile of scorecards sat on a trestle table, weighed down by a couple of small rocks and some Masters coasters.

A plastic cup stood next to them, filled to the brim with the tiny green pellets they use here to disguise any blemishes on the grass. They do not like blemishes at Augusta National but some cannot be disguised.

Twenty minutes after midday, the man who has won this tournament three times ambled over from the putting green and greeted the officials in their green jackets. He addressed one of them by name, as if he had never been away, as if he had never fallen from grace, as if he had never led the LIV breakaway, as if he had never turned himself into a pariah. ‘Good to see you again,’ he said. And the officials smiled back at him.

Mickelson looked different. His face is gaunt and pinched and his walk a little stooped, as if he carries the heavy burden of a tainted legacy as he walks the fairways where once he was the favoured son, this generation’s Arnold Palmer with this generation’s Arnie’s Army in tow. Mickelson is changed. It is as if he has become one of the hollow men, a man at the heart of things for so long and now banished to the margins.

‘Our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass,’ T. S. Eliot wrote in The Hollow Men and that is what Mickelson, more than any of the LIV golf rebels, has been struggling with. The loss of his place. The loss of his voice. The idea became a reality at the Champions Dinner on Tuesday night when Mickelson is said to have barely uttered a word all night.

One of the all-time greats of the game has become a prophet without honour. Mickelson’s vision was to use LIV as leverage to force the PGA Tour to raise its prize money and its working conditions and his vision has come to fruition.

LIV has forced the PGA Tour to make radical changes. Mickelson’s former colleagues, men like Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm, have become the beneficiaries, and yet Mickelson is out in the cold, watching others profit from the stance he took.

There is no turning back for him now. On his black shirt and his black hat, there were garish triangle logos promoting the Hy Flyers team he captains on the LIV tour. It would be fair to say that neither he nor the Hy Flyers have been lighting up LIV. 

Mickelson sits in 42nd place in the individual LIV standings, which lists only 49 participants. The Hy Flyers are in 10th place in the 12-team league. Not that anyone pays much attention anyway.

As he walked on to that first tee on Thursday, it felt as if we watching golf’s lost soul. It was only two years ago that he completed one of the greatest achievements in the history of golf by winning the USPGA Championship on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island at the age of 50 and become the oldest ever winner of a Major. That feels like a lifetime ago. He is ranked 425 in the world now. Last week, at the LIV event in Orlando, he finished 41st in a field of 48.

Very little was expected of him at Augusta when he teed it up for the first round. He missed the Masters last year as he struggled to cope with being at the centre of the LIV maelstrom. He had been anointed its ringleader, the fire-starter for a civil war that is still tearing golf apart and he was struggling to deal with the scrutiny and the upheaval. ‘I know I have not been at my best,’ he said at the time, ‘and I desperately need some time away to prioritise the ones I love most and work on being the man I want to be.’

And yet on Thursday, something beautiful happened at the Masters. Golf got Mickelson back. For one tournament only, perhaps, maybe even for one round only. But it still felt like something to cherish. Augusta can sometimes act as a salve for the troubled. It has performed that function for Tiger Woods in the past. More than once. It is still doing it now.

Perhaps that is because, within its walls, the traditions of Augusta National seem to blot out the real world. It is a cocoon where mobile phones are not allowed and social media does not exist and the jeering of players would never be tolerated. It has helped to heal Woods in the past and there were times on Thursday when it seemed to be doing the same for Mickelson. Suddenly, he was back where he once belonged.

He received warm applause on the first tee and when he striped his drive down the middle of the fairway, he got more. ‘Yes, sir,’ one of the patrons yelled out as he followed the flight of Mickelson’s ball. He hit his approach to the green right at the pin and finished with a par. ‘I missed you in Jacksonville defending your title,’ another patron said as Mickelson walked to the second tee. ‘Maybe I’ll see you next year.’ Mickelson glanced at him and gave him the thumbs-up sign that was once the trademark of his likability.

The par-5 second hole was vintage Mickelson. It was, to be honest, a reminder of why he was so loved, a reminder of what we have been missing, a reminder of just what a brilliant, sublime talent he possesses. He carved his tee shot the woods on the right of the fairway and, surrounded by awe-struck admirers, he smashed it out with a wood. There was the sound of a branch snapping but the ball flew onwards and came to rest by a television tower 50 feet from the front of the green. ‘Hell, yeah,’ one of the patrons shouted.

Another crowd gathered around Mickelson’s ball. Chairs were moved to give him a line of sight to the green. This time, he produced something close to one of the flop shots he was revered for, looping it high into the air and bringing it to rest five feet from the pin. Mickelson drained the putt for birdie to roars of approval from the gallery and marvelling shakes of the head all around the green. It was a joy to watch. It was golf at its innovative, creative best. 

Mickelson dropped a shot at the next hole but then birdied both the eighth and the ninth, with a monster 30ft putt, to go to two under and sneak on to the lower reaches of the leaderboard. He hit the ball into the water at the 11th and dropped two shots but his tee shot over Rae’s Creek at the 12th to within six feet of the hole was a thing of beauty and he made birdie to move back into the red.

He made another birdie at the 13th but then embraced more chaos at the 14th. His tee shot nestled next to a tree trunk, so close that it did not give a left-hander a shot. So he had to hook it out with a right-handed stance and it flew across the fairway into rough at the other side. That he escaped with a bogey that reduced him to -1 was something of a triumph.

He birdied the 15th but found the water, again, at the 16th and dropped a shot there. He was in the trees at the 17th and rescued par with another ridiculously good flop shot. He finished his round on -1, six shots off the lead, three shots ahead of Woods.

It was all vintage Mickelson, chaos mixed with breathtakingly brilliant golf. It is why his voice in golf should be so much more than quiet and meaningless, exiled to the wasteland of the LIV tour. For one day at least, golf’s great entertainer was back, a pariah no more, a hero brought in from the cold.

Another crowd gathered around Mickelson’s ball. Chairs were moved to give him a line of sight to the green. This time, he produced something close to one of the flop shots he was revered for, looping it high into the air and bringing it to rest five feet from the pin. Mickelson drained the putt for birdie to roars of approval from the gallery and marvelling shakes of the head all around the green. It was a joy to watch. It was golf at its innovative, creative best.

Mickelson dropped a shot at the next hole but then birdied both the eighth and the ninth, with a monster 30ft putt, to go to two under and sneak on to the lower reaches of the leaderboard. He hit the ball into the water at the 11th and dropped two shots but his tee shot over Rae’s Creek at the 12th to within six feet of the hole was a thing of beauty and he made birdie to move back into the red.

He made another birdie at the 13th but then embraced more chaos at the 14th. His tee shot nestled next to a tree trunk, so close that it did not give a left-hander a shot. So he had to hook it out with a right-handed stance and it flew across the fairway into rough at the other side. That he escaped with a bogey that reduced him to -1 was something of a triumph. He was still only six shots off the lead. He was three shots better off than Woods.

It was classic Mickelson. It was chaos mixed with breathtakingly brilliant golf. It was why he was once such a crowd-pleaser. It was why he was once a hero. It was why his voice in golf should be so much more than quiet and meaningless, exiled to the wasteland of the LIV tour. It was a joy to watch him again but the joy was overcome with regret for a reputation lost and for the way things might have been.