KEY POINTS:
He had been the essence of America's disappointment, the player with the major championships who in the Ryder Cup had been a major flop, the individual ranked No 2 in the world who kept coming in No 2 in his matches when only No 1 mattered.
A few
days ago, Phil Mickelson, in theory the best player in the US squad if not necessarily playing the best, attempted to elude any accountability when someone asked him if, in his seventh Cup competition, he should be the leader.
"My only responsibility," was Mickelson's answer, "is to play well."
In the morning foursome matches yesterday, that's exactly what he finally managed to do, teaming up with 22-year-old Anthony Kim to halve against Europe's Padraig Harrington and Robert Karlsson as the Americans led by five-and-a-half points to Europe's two-and-a-half.
Three down after having lost 10, 11 and 12, the Americans then won 13, 14 and 15, Mickelson sinking the birdie at 15 and, with that familiar goofy grin, giving a pump of his arm as the home crowd at Valhalla Golf Club chanted "U-S-A, U-S-A".
Kim holed a par-saving putt on 18 to halve the match and suddenly the US were on their way for the first time since 1991 at Kiawah Island to the lead in the morning matches, something unexpected.
Mickelson had earned only 11 points, total, in his six previous Cup appearances and had been criticised for his failures. In 2004, he was teamed with Tiger Woods - missing from this Ryder Cup - and together they couldn't get even half a point.
But with Kim - who, like Mickelson, grew up in Southern California - Mickelson was efficient when he needed to be.
"We wanted this so bad," said the 38-year-old Mickelson, "that I think we were a little tight. We've got to go out and kind of freewheel it a little bit, play more relaxed and see if we can make some more birdies."
They made only three but, with only three bogeys, that proved enough for a tie. The emotional lift of coming back from three down in the Ryder Cup's opening match could not be understated for an American team who have lost the Cup on five of the last six meetings.
Kim, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour this year, said: "Phil really has taken me under his wing. It was really nice of him to do so. I'm learning so much out there, even while we're playing."
A great many others also learned that despite his protestation about not being the leader of the American team, that's exactly what Phil Mickelson has become.
Harrington did everything you would expect of a three-times major champion as he and McDowell got off to the best of starts. Harrington had contributed one birdie to the cause and McDowell two. Ian Poulter and Justin Rose similarly made an early move for Europe, one up after two.
Paul Azinger, at the end of the morning, had described his side as being "in a good place, mentally". He, personally, was in a much better place than he might have been following his extraordinary gaffe at a rally in the town on Thursday night, when he had told the crowd: "It's OK to cheer missed putts".
He took until lunchtime yesterday to explain himself - and then he said that cheering missed putts was something that happened all the time in Europe. "What I meant," he expanded, "was that if we win a hole, it's OK to cheer however it happened."
He pointed, quite rightly, to how his Kentucky crowd had been properly behaved, but was not about to add that this was no thanks to him.
The morning had promised so much from a European point of view. Nick Faldo had talked to his players of the importance of visualising where they would hit their opening tee shot, and each of his players in turn caught the fairway - Harrington, Paul Casey, Justin Rose and Lee Westwood, in that order.
Not only that, but there was only one game - involving Rose and Poulter - in which Europe did not mount the second tee with a one-hole lead. To all intents and purposes, it looked as if the visitors were setting themselves up for a sixth victory in seven starts.
Things continued in the same happy vein for the first 80 minutes. Then, though, the tide began to turn, most notably in the second match in which Casey and Henrik Stenson, who had been two up after two, lost each of the next three holes to birdies. They were playing Justin Leonard and Hunter Mahan, with Mahan lucky to have been given a place on the team after what he had said about Ryder Cup players being "slaves for the week".
Where Leonard and Mahan were complementing each other, the same did not apply to Casey and Stenson. These two massive hitters, who would have perhaps married better in the four-balls they did not play, amassed a watery seven at the par-five seventh to go one to the bad.
Two down at the turn, they got it back to one at the 10th with what was their first birdie of the day but were always fighting a losing battle. As Casey said: "We got off to this great start and I thought that was going to set the tone, but we just made too many mistakes."
Rose and Poulter lost a match in which they were two up at the turn. After Faldo had been on the receiving end of so much criticism for giving Poulter a wild-card ahead of the in-form Darren Clarke, the captain wanted to demonstrate for both his and Poulter's sake that the Englishman had been a sound choice.
The European pair were three up after six against Stuart Cink and Chad Campbell but could not keep it up. They went behind for a first time at the short 14th, and could have trailed by more had Poulter not played a miraculous flop shot at the 16th.
They halved the 17th thanks to a glorious uphill, down-dale putt from Rose with his hybrid before things came undone at the last.
Poulter unleashed a good tee shot but Rose hit a second into sand, and the pair ended up taking three putts from nine feet.
At the bottom of the line-up, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood were seeing their half-point in a rather more positive light.
Having been two down with two to play, they won the 17th in a par as Kenny Perry missed the eight-footer he had for the match. They then seized the 18th as poor Perry, the home hero, hit in water.
Garcia's record of never having lost a foursome was still intact. His head was up again - and he was expected to go on from there to be the kind of on-course leader he has always been in the past.
