HUMBLE, Texas – Phil Mickelson decided to use one of his two get-out-of-jail-free cards to skip the Shell Houston Open pro-am on Wednesday, but he did show up at the course.
Mickelson arrived at Redstone Golf Club around 4:30 p.m. local time, then began working on the driving range and practice green. He will open the tournament on the 10th tee at 7:50 CT Thursday morning alongside defending champion Hunter Mahan and Geoff Ogilvy.
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In his last start, he missed the cut at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational following scores of 73-79, the latter of which included a pair of triple bogeys.
It’s been a characteristically up-and-down season so far for Mickelson, who won the Waste Management Phoenix Open and finished T-3 at the WGC-Cadillac Championship, but failed to finish inside the top-20 in each of his five other appearances.
This week marks the three-time Masters champion’s last start before heading to Augusta National in two weeks.
All PGA Tour members are allowed two free passes to be excused from Wednesday pro-ams during the course of the season.