Woods-Mickelson rivalry sailing in murky waters

The drumroll for this week's resumption of the Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson rivalry is somewhat muffled by the fact that no one knows what to expect when the 35th Memorial at Muirfield Village Golf Club is teed up for real on Thursday.

Woods is trying to regain his top form in time for the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in two weeks. He has played in only three tournaments since returning from a self-imposed hiatus from competition to deal with the fallout of his highly publicized marital infidelities. Despite struggling with his swing, Woods managed to finish tied for fourth in the Masters. But he missed the cut at the Quail Hollow Championship in April and withdrew from the final round of The Players Championship with neck pain diagnosed as an inflamed facet joint.

Since then, Woods has also parted with his longtime swing coach Hank Haney. Although he says he's not 100 percent healthy, the defending Memorial champion and four-time winner of Jack Nicklaus' tournament apparently is ready to see what will happen, just like the rest of us. Rob Oller of The Columbus Dispatch wrote a great column on the state of Woods' game last week that should be checked out under my Suggested reading slug: For better or worse, all eyes will be on Tiger.

Mickelson is coming off a poor showing in the Crowne Plaza Invitational, missing the cut in a tournament he won in dramatic fashion in 2008. Perhaps Larry Dorman of the New York Times is right when he suggests Mickelson needs Woods to be in a field to perform at his best level. After Mickelson shot a sloppy 1-over-par 71 in the first round of the Crowne Plaza Invitational last week, Dorman wrote:

In a trend that started at the Tour Championship last season, Mickelson seems to have been saving his best performances for tournaments in which Woods was also playing. In fact, of the last five tournaments in which both were in the field, Mickelson won three, finished second in one and tied for 17th in another. He finished first at the 2009 Tour Championship, first at the ’09 WGC-HSBC Champions, first at the Masters, second at the Quail Hollow Championship and tied for 17th at the Players Championship, fading to a closing 74 after starting the day five strokes off the pace before Woods had to withdraw with a neck problem.

Before the Woods as Motivation theme is dismissed, it should be mentioned that in Mickelson’s first seven events preceding this year’s Masters, during which Woods was absent, Mickelson had only one top-10 finish (tied for eighth at AT&T Pebble Beach) and no other finishes higher than 19th.

It certainly is food for thought. Although Mickelson probably decided to play in the Memorial more to fine tune his game in preparation for the U.S. Open than anything else, it certainly adds to his motivation that Tiger is in the field hoping to keep his status as the game's No. 1 ranked player in the world.

Mickelson's presence at Muirfield Village this week is a big plus for the Memorial. It should be noted that tournament host Nicklaus will be playing with Mickelson in this year's pre-tournament Skins Game along with Sean O'Hair, Kenny Perry and Ernie Els. Perhaps as part of his attempt to shine a tarnished image, Woods also has agreed to play in the just-for-fun format. He'll be grouped with Zach Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk.

The pairings might be Nicklaus' way to show Mickelson appreciation for attending this year's event. Mickelson skipped last year's edition of the tournament for personal reasons. But Mickelson also indicated after the 2008 Memorial that he didn't like the high rough setup of the course and hinted he might not be eager to return if his flop-shot wedges were going to be taken out of play in the future. Apparently, that's all water under the bridge.

Information from Golf.com and ESPN.com contributed to this post.