SAN DIEGO -- Phil Mickelson walked off the 18th green to the usual cheers he receives at golf tournaments, more so here in his hometown, although it was deferential applause at its best Sunday afternoon.
A fan looked down from a grandstand and shouted, "You're still the man, Phil,'' as Mickelson trudged past. He acknowledged the praise, knowing he had done little to deserve it at the Buick Invitational.
Mickelson's all-black wardrobe highlighted by a white belt got more attention than his game, which finally produced a birdie at the final hole. Set up by an excellent drive and approach, that type of play was far too infrequent at Torrey Pines and did little to take away the feeling that something is not quite right with Mickelson as a new season begins.
A Butch Harmon client captured the Buick Invitational, but you could have won a lot wagering it would be Nick Watney instead of Mickelson, who loves Torrey Pines and has won the tournament three times.
While it might be too early to start questioning Mickelson's game, it is tough to ignore just one sub-par round in six attempts this season, a missed cut by seven strokes and a tie for 42nd at a tournament in which he was one of just three players among the top 25 in the world entered.
And when you consider that Mickelson, 38, is typically a fast starter, having won half of his PGA Tour events on the West Coast, this doesn't look so good.
His score of 2-over-par 290 is his highest 72-hole score in the tournament he has played 15 times as a pro. And his final-round 75 is his worst here on a Sunday. He finished 13 strokes behind Watney, who birdied two of the last three holes and shot 68 to win by one over John Rollins.
"A little bit, a little bit,'' Mickelson said when asked if he was surprised by this start to the 2009 season. "I can certainly feel some rust. I didn't play for over two months. And it's rusty. I spent seven or eight days before this season trying to get ready, and I thought that it was coming together. But it hasn't quite yet.
"We'll see how it goes at Pebble. I've got two weeks where I have courses that I've won at [Pebble Beach and Riviera]. And I'd like to see if I can get [to] playing well.''
Asked what he needed to work on, Mickelson wasn't joking when he said, "Pretty much all areas. I need to drive it better. Fortunately, the fairways at Pebble -- Poppy [Hills] and Spyglass as well -- are wide and usually soft. The greens will be tough, and I didn't putt well this week. But the short game is starting to come around. That was probably the best thing, the chipping started to get a little bit better.''
Perhaps that is because Mickelson had plenty of opportunities.
He hit just 26 of 56 fairways (46 percent) and only 45 of 72 greens in regulation (63 percent), and tied for 25th in total putts with 118 for the week. But he never had less than 30 in any round after Thursday. (Watney was tied for 13th with just two fewer putts but no three-putts for the tournament.) And Mickelson missed three putts inside of 5 feet and made only 8 of 23 putts from the 5-20 foot range.
Although Mickelson downplays the notion, it has to be frustrating that he has been unable to take advantage of the absence of Tiger Woods -- an absence that began right here at Torrey Pines, where Woods played his last event when he won the U.S. Open in June.
Mickelson, who won twice last year, has not been able to add to his career total of 34 PGA Tour wins in his 11 starts since Woods left the scene due to knee surgery. Mickelson had chances to win the Bridgestone Invitational and the Tour Championship, but that's really been it. He has admitted that he was most disappointed at not contending at the past two major championships, which were won by Padraig Harrington.
Difficulty on the greens is what Mickelson pointed to last year, and he said he discovered a flaw along with coach Dave Pelz around the time of the Ryder Cup. Mickelson, seemingly cured, then missed a playoff by a shot at the Tour Championship and proclaimed that the offseason would be used to fine-tune a few areas with an eye on 2009.
But putting remains an issue. During Friday's round on the North Course, Mickelson missed eight putts inside of 6 feet and had 32 total in a round of 72. And just as Golf Channel analyst Nick Faldo was commenting on the shaky state of Mickelson's game during Sunday's final round, Lefty butchered the sixth green by 4-putting.
"I felt really good coming into the year because my alignment was much better,'' he said. "And I can't put too much credence into here or even next week [due to bumpy greens]. You can hit solid putts I had a foot-and-a-half putt miss. It's not that I lined up poorly or hit it poorly, it just happens here. I'm not going to worry too much about it. But I will work on my speed and try to see if I can feed some balls in and get it going.''
Mickelson has had indifferent starts to seasons past, only to snap out of it with a win. Two years ago, his first three starts were no better than a tie for 45th, then he broke through with a win at Pebble Beach. Last year at Pebble, Mickelson missed the cut, then won the following week at the Northern Trust Open.
The good news for Mickelson, still ranked fourth in the world, is he now heads to a place where he has won three times, at Pebble Beach, then to the Northern Trust, where he will commute by jet from his San Diego home.
A victory at either venue -- or at the Accenture Match Play, a tournament he has never won -- would render all this talk meaningless, but the clock is ticking on Woods' return.
And while nothing is ever guaranteed in golf, an eight-month winless stretch while the game's best player has been on the sideline remains difficult to comprehend, especially for a player of Mickelson's ability.
Bob Harig covers golf for ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.