Monday Scramble: After disastrous week, more bad news on the horizon for Phil Mickelson?

The Honda Classic devolves into chaos, Phil Mickelson retreats from public view, Bryson DeChambeau returns (we think) to the PGA Tour, Zach Johnson assumes a new title and more in this week’s edition of Monday Scramble:

That ... that is not how we saw that final round playing out at the Honda Classic.

In what turned out to be an ominous sign, Daniel Berger bogeyed the reachable par-5 18th hole on Saturday, cutting what had been a six-shot lead to five. No matter; that still should have been a comfy position. According to stats guru Justin Ray, Dustin Johnson (2017 HSBC) is the only top 25-ranked player in the past dozen years on Tour who has coughed up a third-round lead of five or more shots. Other than that, the game’s elite were a perfect 16-for-16. Even though PGA National is a fearsome test, Berger was lapping the field from tee to green and there was little reason to think Sunday would be stressful.

Ah, but then Shane Lowry birdied the first. Four-shot lead.

Berger made a soft 7 on the third hole without taking a penalty shot. Two.

Lowry added another short birdie on No. 4. One.

And then Berger dropped back-to-back shots on Nos. 5 and 6. All of a sudden, he trailed by one – his win probability, according to the folks at Data Golf, plunging from 84% to 22%. It turned out to be a disastrous day for Berger: His only two birdies came courtesy of hole-outs around the green, and his longest putts holed all day came on the last two greens – a 6-footer for par, then a 3-footer for bogey. That’s it. He made just 28 feet worth of putts in the final round, losing nearly four shots to the field.

“Didn’t play well, so I didn’t win the golf tournament,” he said. Enough said.

So then the attention turned to Lowry. He played beautifully, going ’round the Champion Course bogey free. Even with a cautious miss left on the 141-yard 17th, he escaped with a scrambling par.

Making his way to the par-5 finisher, it appeared as though he’d – at worst – find himself in a playoff with Sepp Straka, who was standing in the 18th fairway and playing the tournament of his life.

Then the heavens opened up. A blinding rainstorm. Guys looked around, laughing, waiting for a reprieve. Finally, the rules official on 18 told them to play away.

No stranger to playing in unfavorable conditions – he is the 2019 Open champion, after all – Lowry seemed to rush his shot in the downpour and hit his worst tee ball of the week: a low, 241-yard hook that nearly caught the water hazard that is only in play for weekend duffers.

Having to hit that drive, at that time, Lowry said, was “as bad of a break as I’ve gotten in a while.” From there, he laid up and – no excuse this time – hit a dreadful wedge to 43 feet. Two putts later, he was soaked, steamed and a shot short.

“It’s hard to take, to be honest,” he said afterward. “Feel like I’ve got the tournament stolen from me today. I played the golf perfectly to win the tournament, and that’s this game sometimes and that’s this level.”

All of which is a long way of saying that Sepp Straka won the Honda Classic on Sunday. He played his last five holes in 3 under, including a gutsy birdie on the last, to take the title at 10-under 270. And he also received, it turned out, the break of the tournament, getting to hit his drive on 18 before the deluge. The leader last week in strokes gained: off the tee, his drive sailed 334 yards – the longest of the day – and left him just 192 yards to the flag. He needed only a 6-iron for his approach.

“When Sepp hit his drive, that’s where we would’ve hit our drives and we would’ve had a 3- or 4-iron in, but that’s how golf goes,” said Berger, who, needing to pull off a hero shot for eagle, instead had 253 yards into the green and found the water. “You don’t always get the good breaks.”

Straka didn’t disagree. “It was awesome to be able to get that drive in without the rain,” he said.

In a pouring rain, Straka still found the green with his approach (important to note: he was nearly as close with his mid-iron, 48 feet, as Lowry managed with his wedge) and is now a first-time winner in his fourth season on Tour.

“It’s still surreal,” Straka said. “I’m sure it’ll sink in here before long, but it’s just crazy.”

The fallout for Phil continues.

Just last week, longtime sponsors KPMG and Workday announced that they were parting ways with Mickelson. Callaway said that it was “pausing” its relationship.

He’s reportedly out as host of the PGA Tour’s American Express.

And a reminder: This onslaught of bad news is arriving nine months after Mickelson’s PGA Championship victory, a transcendent title that should have been the capstone to a legendary career, a testament to his remarkable longevity, talent and love of the game.

Now, it’s as if we’re watching a living legend melt down, in real time.

But it’s also a little confusing, how swiftly he’s been buried by corporate America. And it’s actually unclear which part has been most toxic to his brand: the association with the Saudis (whom he called “scary motherf---ers”), the disloyalty to a Tour that has made him one of the game’s richest men, or simply the amorality of a greedy Hall of Famer willing to trash his legacy simply to prove a point.

After reading Mickelson’s 530-word statement – which arrived five days too late, included a half-hearted attempt to discredit writer Alan Shipnuck, and didn’t once mention “PGA Tour,” his workplace for the past 30-plus years – a few things came to mind:

• We might not see Mickelson on Tour for the next few months, either by choice (“desperately need some time away”) or because he’s been suspended. That, then, brings into question his status for the Masters. In some ways it’d be the safest place for a return – hecklers won’t be tolerated, and he can avoid the media spotlight – but it’s unclear whether he’s ready to face his peers, or the other legends at the Champions Dinner. If he doesn’t show there, even his PGA defense could be in doubt.

• What happens next? Judging by his statement, he’s upset that his real motivations regarding the SGL came to light. It’s reasonable to expect that those officials weren’t too thrilled, either. There’s so much money tied up in the venture that it’s hard to imagine it disbanding, so does he continue to blaze this disruptive path? And will they still welcome his involvement if he’s admittedly only using them for leverage?

• And finally: Is more about to be revealed? Shipnuck, who is penning an unauthorized biography on Mickelson due out this spring, seemed to hint as much. If a tidal wave of negative publicity is approaching, it makes more sense that his sponsors are fleeing early.

The Bryson DeChambeau comeback tour was delayed another week – and perhaps longer.

A few days after saying that he planned to defend his title at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, DeChambeau announced on Monday that his injured hand and hip aren’t yet healthy enough to compete. His withdrawal from Bay Hill also puts in doubt his status for next week’s Players Championship. His agent, Brett Falkoff, said that DeChambeau is taking his recovery “day by day.”

Last Friday, Falkoff said that, “as of now,” DeChambeau intended to play at Bay Hill, but he ultimately decided not to push his recovery after trying to ramp up his golf activity over the weekend. He hasn’t played since withdrawing from the Saudi International on Feb. 4, citing a months-long injury to his left hand and a new issue with his hip, which he said he injured when he slipped and fell in Saudi Arabia.

Questions about DeChambeau’s status for Bay Hill began to circulate when his name didn’t appear on the pre-tournament interview schedule – highly unusual for a defending champion, particularly in one of the Tour’s premier regular-season events. He also was a no-show for the Seminole Pro-Member on Monday morning. Then came the statement on social media, at about 11 a.m. ET:

DeChambeau has made only two PGA Tour starts this season, a tie for 25^th at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and a missed cut at the Farmers Insurance Open, dropping to No. 12 in the world ranking. Two weeks ago, he announced that he would continue to compete on the PGA Tour after being one of the players reportedly in negotiations about joining a rival tour.

THIS WEEK’S AWARD WINNERS ...

Captain Obvious: Zach Johnson. Rumored to be The Guy for months, Johnson was officially named the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup captain on Monday. The move makes sense: The two-time major winner has been a member of five teams as a player and the last two as an assistant. With a player’s legacy on the line, a one-time road game could be viewed as an unenviable job for a U.S. skipper – when they arrive in Italy they’ll be 30 years removed from their last victory on foreign soil – but the Americans will be loaded (and humbled after the 2018 debacle), Marco Simone is still largely unknown and Johnson is a tenacious competitor and master strategist who won’t be outmaneuvered by whoever is tabbed as his European counterpart.

Dialed In: Miguel Angel Jimenez. On the PGA Tour Champions he recorded not one but TWO aces during the Cologuard Classic, cruising to his second senior title of the new year and likely living it up all over Tucson. The good life.

An Overdose of #Perspective: Jon Rahm. Here comes baby No. 2 for Rahm and wife Kelley, who announced the news last week on social media. As observers, we’re always interested in the timing of the baby’s arrival – and “summer” is smack dab in the middle of the Opens and the playoffs ...

Please Lose My Address: Greg Norman. In an unintentionally hilarious missive that begins “Surely you jest” and ends with an empty threat about LIV Golf Investments’ involvement being “just the beginning,” Norman makes himself out to look not like a shrewd businessman helming a viable alternative but rather a desperate carnival barker quickly running out of options. Having locked up the game’s best players (at least for now), there’s a strong chance Monahan chuckled while reading it – and then quickly hit delete.

Lovely Tribute: Ribbons for Rosie. Many players at the Honda wore purple ribbons as a way to pay their respects for the late Tim Rosaforte, the legendary golf writer and broadcaster who died last month in South Florida after a battle with Alzheimer’s. His daughter took to Twitter to pen this note of appreciation.

That’ll Sting: 72nd-hole action. Kurt Kitayama’s final-hole birdie, combined with Berger’s watery bogey on the last, made for a couple of big-money moves. Kitayama earned an extra $80,000 with his solo-third finish (much needed after he entered the week with five straight missed cuts). Berger, meanwhile, cost himself about $320,000 by making bogey on the last instead of birdie on the reachable par 5.

OK, Then: Xander Schauffele. In an oddly intense post on Twitter, Schauffele said that his commitment to the PGA Tour “never wavered” even though he instructed his team to do its due diligence on the proposed rival tour. Despite never saying publicly which way he was leaning, he cited “recent articles suggesting speculative statements” about his future as the reason for coming forward about his plans. In any case, his officially official commitment is more bad news for SGL organizers.

Blown Fantasy Pick of the Week: Sungjae Im. The 2020 Honda winner (with a T-8 in his title defense) has already posted five top-11s this season, but he came unglued with an opening 74 and never recovered, missing the cut. It was yet another gut punch for a field that already desperately lacked star power. Sigh.