So I Watched Phil With The Long Putter Today...

And I can say he looked really good over the putts inside ten feet and positively dreadful over the long ones.

Of course, as Steve Elling notes, only a few hours into using the long thing, such inconsistency does not come as a surprise.

"I honestly don't know, I haven't spent enough time with it," he said. "The guys who have used it for a long time, Brendan Steele, Keegan Bradley has putted very well with it, Martin Laird, Webb Simpson, whose guys know a lot more about it, the intricacies of it, but it felt good. I enjoyed it. I had fun today."

Mickelson said there was some awkwardness, since he has putted with his hands ahead slightly ahead of the ball at address and impact for most of his career.

"You can't forward press," he said. "It just passes my hands, so it's a different stroke, so that's probably why it's a little bit more awkward at first for me because I am used to keeping the hands ahead and this time the club is passing my hands."

I'm going to go bold here and say I will not be surprised if we see a two-putter setup in Phil's bag. Long one for the short ones, short one for the long ones. Just saying...

Jim McCabe looks at the mystery that is putting and puts Phil's tinkering in perspective.

A quick look at Vijay Singh was proof of that, because for all the stories about players wielding long putters, isn’t he the poster boy of those who continually treat putting with a fickleness? Sure he is. He’s employed dozens of putters – long and short – and so many techniques that it’s impossible to document. In Round 1 of the Deutsche Bank, Singh had the long putter but he split his hands, had the left one low and the right one turned in such a position that it appeared as if he were throwing a punch.