It showed from the time he ambled toward the first tee, and an enormous cheer rang out. And his adventures on the 482-yard sixth hole even made a bogey easy to swallow.
From well off the fairway and behind the trees, Mickelson hit a sky-high lob wedge from 92 yards over the gallery to about 5 feet, then walked through the crowd, getting high-fives and slaps on the back. He missed the par putt, but relished the moment.
"That was kind of cool there, going through the gallery after hitting right over them," he said.
Woods found no such enthusiasm.
Trying to become the first player since Jack Nicklaus in 1975 to start and finish the year by winning majors, there were early signs of a struggle. Woods had a stern look on his face, a three-putt bogey on his opening hole, and tee shots that rarely found the short grass.
"When I did hit it well off the tee, I didn't hit my irons close," he said. "And then when I did hit it close, I didn't make a putt. Every hole, you could say there's something that I did wrong. And that was frustrating."
Nothing bugged him like the 554-yard 18th, the easiest scoring hole on the Lower Course.
A tee shot in the fairway would have left him a long iron to the green, but this drive sailed so far to the left that it clipped a tree and landed just inside a hazard line.
His ball was plugged so badly that Woods and caddie Steve Williams assumed someone had stepped on it during a brief search. No one could confirm that, so Woods wound up taking a drop where it entered the hazard, played back to the fairway and took bogey.
"If the ball hits a tree and ricochets down, and the ground is pretty hard there, it should not have embedded that far," Woods said. "It was totally unplayable."
Woods didn't get the ruling he wanted from the official, and he sure didn't get any sympathy from the players. He already has won the Masters and British Open this year, and was second at the US Open.
"There's probably plenty of guys happy to see him down the leaderboard for a change," Appleby said. "I don't think you're going to get some, `Oh, I'm so sorry. What a pity.' You guys can write about someone else for a change."
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