America count on Mickelson, the real tiger of matchplay

Curtis Strange is the captain and Tiger Woods is the man around whom the world of golf revolves but on a cold afternoon in the English Midlands yesterday Phil Mickelson was able to shed the terrible burden of always being just one step away from an American Dream.

Though coy about the outcome of titanic ping-pong battles he is alleged to have been waging with Woods in the United States team-room – and increasingly subject to a groundswell of rumour that his personal relationship with the man who has overshadowed so much of his own brilliant but unfulfilled work has moved from cool to near freezing point – Mickelson is refusing to display the demeanour of anyone's No 2.

He is so entrenched in that status in the wake of the Tiger's relentless pursuit of the major prizes it is sometimes surprising that he doesn't wear that number around his neck as a clinching point of identification. But then for the next few days that would be a mis-statement of the balance of individual power. Woods may be the champion of almost every season, but here there is no question that Mickelson is, as they might say at the Brookline Country Club, "der man".

His Ryder Cup record glows in reproach of Woods' own shaming figures of three wins, one half and six defeats. Michelson – 6-2-3 – says: "I don't think it's just the fact that I make a lot of birdies that I enjoy matchplay. I think it's the intensity between two competitors as opposed to the vagueness of playing the golf course and trying to shoot a score. In head-to-head competition in matchplay, yes, you're playing the course, but you're also playing according to how your opponent just played his shot."

There's a look of relish on his face when he says this that suggests The Belfry – like Sotogrande in 1997 and Brookline two years later – represents more than anything a run from the shadow of the Tiger. It is certainly true that he is a little sceptical of the decisive value of refined tactics and a deeply developed sense of "team" which Strange and Europe's captain, Sam Torrance, have been working so hard to create in the last few days.

"How important will it [team spirit] be?" says Mickelson. "I think it's more important to shoot low scores, but we seem to use the concept of 'team' as a motivating factor for us, as we did in 1999 when we had a comeback that hadn't been done in the history of these matches. We used the concept of 'team' and the closeness that we develop over the course of the week to bring out our best play. And yes, that is important, but the most important thing is shooting those low scores."

Mickelson's thrust doesn't demand too much analysis. He is saying that for all the Ryder Cup hype, all the psychological warfare, it really comes down to one essential point: who takes the bigger edge on the course, the man who has fighting talk in his ears or a rock-solid belief that matchplay is the terrain on which he is most comfortable. Not that Mickelson is against a bit of psychological gunfire, however. He showed that in a curtly delivered re-writing of the ethical history of the Ryder Cup. According to him, the origins of the the verbal aggression and catastrophic manners that overwhelmed events in Brookline three years ago were not to be found in the Desert Storm fever of Kiawah Island in South Carolina in 1991. No, the real breakdown came in Dublin, Ohio, four years earlier when Europe's captain, Tony Jacklin, burst into tears at the moment of victory and Jose Maria Olazabal did the most famous dance of triumph since Nobby Stiles celebrated England's World Cup win in 1966. Olazabal, of course, would point out that like Stiles he kept back his dancing shoes until the match was decided.

Said Mickelson: "I think we would be more motivated in this Ryder Cup if, like Europe, we had lost a four-point lead going into the last day in 1999. The emotion then was really no different that we've seen every year in the Ryder Cup, from when I first started watching in 1987 at Muirfield [in Ohio] with people dancing on the green in celebration.

"The Ryder Cup brings out emotions like that which we don't see normally. And it's just part of the event. And it's a good part of the event. I remember in 1997 people jumping in the lake on 17 and swimming before Scott Hoch was about to hit. It's just part of the tournament. And I think that the emotion that is brought out in this event is part of what makes it so unique. And because of that, I would have to say that losing a four-point lead would be a much bigger motivator next time around."

For Mickelson, there is reason to believe, the matchplay has already started. What, for example is more likely to inflame, and perhaps dangerously agitate, a European team that still deep down recoils from the excesses of Ben Crenshaw's winning Americans in 1999 than the theory that the stampede on the 17th green was just part of a tradition established by the coincidental victim, Olazabal, 12 years earlier?

Mickelson, less contentiously, says that the poor individual form is not necessarily a killing factor. "I don't think a guy's form earlier in the year has that much bearing on the Ryder Cup. At this level a guy can turn it all round in the matter of a day or an hour or a minute."

This is especially true if, unlike Tiger Woods, you have a suspicion that you were born to play on the edge that is always provided by matchplay. It is, for a few days at least, maybe the time when golf's second-best player gets to know how it feels to rule his world.