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After Lefty's win, Woods' weakness remains in mind

Tiger Woods faltered as Phil Mickelson found his form under pressure © PA Photos

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The stage was set. Tiger Woods was just a couple off the lead at Pebble Beach, a course he has torn apart limb from limb in the past.

The two pros ahead of him going into the final round, Charlie Wi and Ken Duke, could just as easily have been confused for one of the many amateur competitors at the unique event, with neither having a PGA Tour victory to their name.

In short everything was set up for Woods to claim victory, his first in a full-field event for well over two years. Instead, the nearest thing his illustrious career has had to a rival, Phil Mickelson, blew past him and ran away with the tournament, as Woods blundered his way to a final round 75 that nearly saw him drop out of the top ten.

This wasn't how things were supposed to pan out. With Woods coming to the tail-end of his rehabilitation (in more ways than one), Mickelson is suddenly the one struggling with the recession pains that come with entering a new, less successful phase of your career. Mickelson is the one suffering from physical issues (arthritis) and distracting problems in his personal life (pursuing a court case against vicious internet rumours), problems Woods has supposedly now put behind him.

Yet Mickelson was the one who shot a final round 63 to go from six shots behind to two shots clear.

You can talk about numerous reasons why Lefty pulled off the 40th professional win of his career in such dramatic fashion, but afterwards the man focused primarily on two - the first being the motivation playing with Tiger gives him.

"I am inspired playing with him," Mickelson said. "I think most people are but he seems to bring out the best in me and the last four or five years, I've played some of my best golf playing with him and I really enjoy it."

The second, perhaps more pertinently, is the helpful work he has been doing with sports psychologist Julie Elion in recent weeks.

When asked whether he had been working with Elion - and whether it had helped - Mickelson was prepared to give only a little away.

"Maybe [I have worked with her], and yes [it has helped]," he answered. "It's an area I don't like to talk about too much, but I've had to address it for some of my focus issues.

"It's a process. I mean, there's a lot of little mental hurdles. And it comes down to being able to focus on each individual shot, not trying to force the issue, trying to be patient with the round, accepting the bad breaks. It's all these little hurdles that you have to deal with to be able to get the end result."

Maybe it is a route Tiger now needs to take. As bad as Tiger played on Sunday, Mickelson still could see that his golf swing is basically back where it needs to be.

"I thought watching him play, it looked so different than it has the last few years," the victor noted. "It looked different because it just never looked like he was going to hit a hook the way he had for a while. He was hitting it so solid, you could tell his game was really close."

Mickelson might just have been expressing the magnanimity of a winner - something for which he is renowned - but most casual observers would probably agree with the assessment.

Woods was not stellar from tee to green by any means, but it was on the green where he let himself down. The 14-time major champion missed a ridiculous number of short putts during the final round - putts symptomatic of mental frailty far more than technical deficiency.

"Well, as good as I felt on the greens over there, is as bad as I felt today," Woods said. "I could not get comfortable where I could see my lines. I couldn't get the putter to swing. I just could not get comfortable.

"It was frustrating, because I was looking to someone getting off to two or three under par through six, or even through seven was kind of the goal, and you know, Phil got off to that start. He was five-under through six.

Are Tiger's putting problems a sign of mental weakness? © PA Photos

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"I figured I probably would… I had a chance to pick it up through the middle part of the round I thought; instead, I went the other way.

"I missed a ton of short putts today. I didn't hit it as bad as the score indicated, that's for sure but I missed everything."

Woods has had his fill of coaches throughout the years - at this point, he basically knows all there is to know about the mechanics of a golf swing, with current guru Sean Foley just helping him adjust to the reconstructed knee that has robbed him of his traditional lower-body explosiveness.

But he has never really spoken to someone about the mental side of the game - initially leaving that side of the sport to his father, before subsequently relying on his own unimpeachable sense of superiority to get him through.

Maybe it is time to re-evaluate that stance. Ignoring victory at the Chevron (a clutch win, but one Zach Johnson should have done more to deny him), Woods has thrown away winning positions at every tournament he has been in contention since last year's Masters.

A mental coach who knows what they are doing may be the final specialist Woods needs to see. He's seen doctors to repair his body (some of them of hardly unquestionable character), a number of coaches to rebuild his swing … but nobody to help focus his mind in the right way.

As mental demons seemed to ravage his chances at Pebble, there seems no reason to think they won't take similar hold at Augusta National, Royal Lytham or any other big course during a big tournament over the rest of the year.

For now, however, Woods seems content to keep preaching the same tired expressions of conviction that have stayed there in good times and bad - holding onto the Chevron success as a sign he can still get it done on Sunday.

"People think it's a couple of years but I just won a couple months ago," Woods maintained on Sunday. "I look at that [the Chevron] as a win. And I'm just kind of off to my first start of the year here in the States, and I made some good improvement this week and looking forward to the [WGC-Accenture] Match Play."

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