Phil Mickelson stepped to the microphone at the U.S. Open for the first news conference of the rest of his life looking like a pale shadow of his old self. His eyes were wider, his cheeks flecked with fragments of gray beard. Where once he’d sparred with the media like he was angling for a debate-team prize, now he was parrying barbed questions with dodges, evasions and brief non-answers. He wasn’t nervous — Phil Mickelson doesn’t get nervous — but he clearly wasn’t relishing this particular inquisition.
Mickelson is a week removed from his reentry into public life, three-plus months removed from the publication of comments that sent him into golf exile.