Mickelson returns to the top of leaderboard

Four days after a big win at Pebble Beach, Phil Mickelson kept right on rolling with a 5-under 66 to take a one-shot lead in the opening round of the Northern Trust Open. Mickelson chipped in from 35 feet on the 18th hole at Riviera to take a lead over J.B. Holmes who, in his fourth tournament since returning from brain surgery, mixed birdies and bogeys along his back nine. Holmes was level with Hunter Mahan, who birdied four straight toward the end of his round. All three played in the afternoon as the wind died slightly. Jonathan Byrd had the best score of the morning, when it was chilly and blustery. He had a 68. The first round was suspended by darkness with 30 players yet to finish the round, a typical occurrence at this tournament with 144-man field and limited daylight. Mickelson is coming off an 8-under 64 in the final round of the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where he came back from a six-shot deficit and beat playing partner Tiger Woods by 11 shots. He holed a 30-foot birdie putt on the long par-3 fourth hole, and then really got going on the back nine. After a tough pitch to 12 feet that led to birdie on the 10th, Mickelson had 297 yards to the hole on the 11th and decided to hit driver, a shot he had not tried in months. It came off perfectly and climbed onto the front edge of the green, making Mickelson the only player to have an eagle putt on the 587-yard hole, which played right into the wind. The pin was all the way back, away from a large hump in the putting surface, which gave Mickelson the green light. His eagle putt from 60 feet died next to the hole. “I didn’t think it was going to necessarily be reachable into that wind, but I was able to hit a low drive off the tee that scooted along the ground, and I felt like if I could hit one more of those with a driver I could get right up by the green,” Mickelson said. “I felt like it was worth the risk to try to scoop one up.” Dating to the back nine of his second round at Pebble Beach, Mickelson has made birdie or eagle on one-third of the holes he has played. And his streak of consecutive holes without a bogey finally ended at 49 on the par-3 16th. On the 17th, his wedge rolled back to 7 feet for birdie, but the putt slid by on the left. He faced another quick chip on the 18th, but it dropped in with perfect speed. “It wasn’t one I was really trying to make,” he said. “It was quick, it was downhill, and I had to play about four or five feet of break, so it’s not one that you’re trying to get aggressive with. I was trying to get good speed and try to let it feed with the break, and I got fortunate that it went in.” Holmes was the first player to reach 5 under, and that’s where his fun began — consecutive bogeys when he failed to get up-and-down from just short of the green; a tap-in birdie at the par-3 sixth, with the pin below the bunker in the middle of the green; an 18-foot birdie on the seventh, a three-putt double bogey on the eighth and the birdie at the end. He has struggled with a slight loss of power since brain surgery in September, and he even topped a shot in Phoenix a few weeks ago. But it’s all starting to come together. “I feel like each week my swing has definitely gotten a little bit better and improved a little bit,” Holmes said. “My swing speed has slowly come back a little bit being out here and playing this much.” Byrd woke up Thursday morning to hear the wind whipping at his rental house on the Pacific bluffs. The last thing he wanted to do was play golf at Riviera, but it worked out well for him. He made five birdies in the toughest of conditions. The average score from the morning wave was 73.7. “We’re staying up on a bluff about five miles away,” he said. “I got out of bed this morning and walked outside, and I was pretty anxious about playing this golf course today because it was howling on top of that bluff. And it whipped all day. My approach was just to keep it in play and have a pretty conservative game plan.” The afternoon players got a slight break, though the wind remained a factor. “The last seven holes the wind started to die down progressively, and by the end, it couldn’t be playing any nicer or any better,” Mahan said. “So I was excited to come make some birdies late.”