The safe choice is no alternative for major-less Mickelson

The watch is always there, on his wrist, because even on the golf course, in the midst of a tournament, Phil Mickelson likes to keep track of the time.

The leaderboard doesn't provide quite enough information. He monitors action on adjacent fairways. He asks marshals and television cameramen for reports on players who came through earlier.

His mind--always spinning, churning--kicks into high gear when he finds himself in a tight spot, in the rough or the trees. Angles must be calculated, obstacles accounted for, wind and terrain factored into the equation. The game becomes interesting.

No thoughts of laying up. No chipping out to save par.

"I love being creative and trying to make birdies from behind trees," he says. "When I go play, that's what makes it fun."

Thrilling to watch

Golf the Mickelson way has produced enough thrills and surprises for 21 career victories on the PGA Tour, earning its practitioner millions a year in purses and endorsements, ranking him second behind Tiger Woods. It has won him a legion of fans.

It also has produced inglorious catastrophe, a feast-or-famine routine in which bogey follows birdie, par being the exception. Critics have various theories on this dynamic. Some call him a choker, others say he is reckless. A few have ventured into the pathological, suggesting a gambler's compulsion.

Their assertions are fueled by a simple fact: For all his success, Mickelson is the best player never to have won a major. He is 0 for 40 in golf's biggest events. He knows the whispers will resume, as persistent as ever, when he tees off in the British Open at Muirfield on Thursday.

The critics want him to change. He says they don't understand how his mind works.

In sports, thinking is eyed with suspicion. When does it become a distraction?

Much of Mickelson's attention is devoted to family. He recently took an extended break from the tour for the birth of his second daughter, Sophia. Lee Trevino, who played the televised event in Michigan, sees this as significant.

"Maybe golf is not 100 percent with Phil," he says. "With Tiger Woods, it's 100 percent. It's like a boxing match where one guy trains a little harder and wears the other guy down."

A gambler at heart

There is also Mickelson's alleged proclivity for gambling.

He has appeared on sports radio to handicap football games and talked about making preseason bets on teams he thinks will win the Super Bowl and World Series. Wagers of $20,000 on the Baltimore Ravens and Arizona Diamondbacks in recent years paid roughly $1 million.

"He knows so much about sports they think, 'What the heck is this guy doing? Is he studying the betting line?'" says his former college coach Steve Loy. "That is not the case. Phil is just a guy who wants to know about everything."

Which gets back to the way his mind works. Which gets back to the golf course.

Having coached and watched him for 17 years, Loy knows Mickelson will never be the type to hit down the middle, to shoot for par.

"He can't stand that kind of golf," Loy says. "He's always striving, always needing to be challenged. For as long as I have known him, he has always tried to beat the golf course."

As for the major tournament failures, Mickelson's reaction has ranged from avoidance to anger to, more recently, grinning acceptance. His strategy, however, remains unwavering. He told reporters as much after a five-putt green at the Players Championship last March and reiterated his position at the Michigan skins game.

"When I don't try a shot that I know I can hit and things don't work out, I don't save par or what have you, that's hard for me to accept," he says. "If I go for it and hit a bad shot that goes in the water or I make double, that's all right."

His mind works that way. And maybe all the theories about his game --the choking, the recklessness, the gambler's self-destruction--melt away before a simpler truth about a guy who wears a watch on the course and is always calculating the angles.