Under Pressure

UW alum Nick Taylor went toe-to-toe with Phil Mickelson at Pebble Beach in February — and gave him a taste of his own medicine

BY BOB SHERWIN

It was clear to most everyone in the gallery for February’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am that Nick Taylor had an almost negligible chance of a wire-to-wire PGA TOUR victory.

How could anyone believe that this poor lad would hold up against his opponent – Phil Mickelson – in the final pairing on that blustery Sunday morning? Mickelson, among the Tour’s most popular and iconic golfers for the past couple decades, who turned pro when Taylor was four years old and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame two years before Taylor earned his Tour card, was lurking just one shot behind. Mickelson, who was practically playing on home turf, having won five times at Pebble, including the previous year’s AT&T. Mickelson, who had 44 Tour victories — including five majors — 36 seconds, 28 thirds and 195 top-10s in 623 Tour starts.

As for Taylor? Well, he had been ranked No. 1 once, but that was all the way back in college, at the University of Washington, when he held No. 1 status in the Rolex World Amateur rankings for 20 weeks in 2009. Now, 11 years later, Taylor was ranked 229th, had earned just one victory in six years on the PGA TOUR, and had no second-place finishes, no thirds and just 11 top-10s in his 161-event career.

The crowd overwhelmingly favored the native Californian. Shoot, Taylor wasn’t even a native American, instead a product of Winnipeg by way of Abbotsford, B.C. His gallery was woefully underwhelming. His wife, Andie, followed him for most of the front nine, but had to leave for five holes to pick up their three-month-old son, Charlie, at daycare. The only other supporters were his in-laws, a couple friends who drove down from Abbotsford overnight, and perhaps a handful of loyal Canadian geese.

How many times have we seen this setup? Answer: Virtually every week. Check out the first three rounds in every tournament — inevitably, there’s a guy ranked near triple figures on the PGA TOUR money list who turns in an uncommon round to take or share a lead. When it comes time to hand out the trophy on the 18th green on Sunday evening, however, that same guy is over in the parking lot slamming his car trunk with the umbrage of missed opportunities, as a more well-known player hoists the hardware.

Taylor, 32, understood exactly what he was up against. A six-year pro, he’s seen the scenario above play out time and again. He knew the odds. He knew what Mickelson would bring, and what the crowd would give him.

“Obviously, if he makes a putt, or a great shot, the crowd’s going to go wild,” Taylor told the media after the third round. “I’ve just got to do my own thing, try to block all that out. Easier said than done, without having done it before.”

That’s the thing — heading into that final round at Pebble, Taylor had never faced that kind of pressure. In his six years on T Tour, the former Husky had never slept on a 54-hole lead. Nor, for that matter, had he ever held a 36-hole or 18-hole lead, either.

Taylor’s lone victory, at the Sanderson Farms Championship on Nov. 9, 2014, was a different circumstance with a different caliber of competition. At that time, Sanderson was an opposite-field tournament, which meant that the field included few top players. It also was just his fourth PGA TOUR start, so Taylor hadn’t yet experienced enough failure on Tour to understand the pressure a golfer feels when a real chance to win comes along. He started four strokes behind on that Sunday and shot a final-round 66 for a comfortable two-stroke victory.

Winning so quickly, Taylor could have been forgiven for thinking that it was always going to be this easy.

“I didn’t have time to understand the gravity of what happened,” he says, looking back. “So much happened. I got married. I graduated. I went through Q-School and turned my (2014) season around in my last four, five weeks for a dramatic finish to get my Tour card.”

Indeed, a few weeks before, Taylor had capped his 2014 Web.com Tour season with a final-round, career-best 63 in the Tour Championship. The top 25 earned cards. He finished in 21st place.

“Then, six weeks later, I’m in contention and winning my first tournament. There was a lot of milestones in a short time,” Taylor adds. “I didn’t have much of a break to let it soak in. Winning is a difficult thing to accomplish. I ended up not playing that great.”

For the next five seasons, Taylor was a one-win wonder — one of hundreds who have come and gone over the years, most long forgotten to history. He missed the cut 60 times, making not a dollar for his efforts — essentially, going 14 months of his first 60 on Tour without a paycheck. He finished 50th or worse another 34 times, earning enough to cover expenses, but not advancing his career. His best finish in the FedEx Cup standings was 93rd, in 2017.

By the end of the 2018 season, Taylor felt that the end was near. Entering the final regular-season event — the Wyndham Championship — he was ranked 129th in the FedEx Cup standings. Only the top 125 players automatically retain Tour cards for the subsequent season, and Taylor knew that he needed a top-10 finish to earn enough points to make the jump — an accomplishment he had only achieved seven times in his 121 Tour starts to date.

“I had missed a bunch of cuts in a row and was trying to figure things out,” Taylor recalls.

The facts bear out his frustration — in his previous 26 starts, Taylor had made just one top-20, and missed 12 cuts. Eight years into his professional golf career (including a year off in 2013 and a 2014 season on the Web.com Tour), with a toddler at home, Taylor found himself beginning to think ahead to life after golf.

It didn’t help his chances when he took a triple bogey late in the Wyndham’s third round, placing him on the cusp of melting back to minor tours and major concerns. Taylor needed an extraordinary final round to retain his playing privileges for another season. And, just as he had in the 2014 Web.com Tour Championship, when he had to have that epic round, he found it. Taylor matched his career-best with yet another 63 on Sunday to finish tied for eighth. He won $174,000, just enough to slip into 123rd place on the money list and hold onto his exclusive — and elusive — eligibility for another year.

UW golf coach Matt Thurmond, who now works at Arizona State, says Taylor “is unique’’ when it comes to pressure situations.

“Under pressure, everyone speeds up. Your mind speeds up, you walk faster, you swing tighter, faster,” Thurmond says. “Somehow, Nick slows down when there’s more pressure. His swing, his mood, his tone of voice are all slower. He always has been that way from when he first started playing the game.

“I’m sure his heart is racing, but he’s able to manage it.,” Thurmond continues. “He’s done that in his career over and over again.”

Perhaps that’s why Taylor, out of curiosity, spent the night before his final round at Pebble Beach this past February watching P video highlights of Mickelson’s short game magic. Where many golfers would have steered away from the pressure, from the gravity of the moment and the intensity of the challenge, Taylor — like a Formula One champion — steered into it.

Taylor didn’t need to steel his nerves. Pressure isn’t winning a PGA TOUR tournament in February. Pressure is going into the final round of your season knowing that your career rests on the next 18 holes, and then coming through with the best professional round of your life. Pressure is doing that twice. That’s where Taylor went to find his resolve that night — back to 2018.

“I don’t want to be in that situation again,” he says. “That’s more pressure than trying to win a golf tournament. (In 2018), I was trying to keep my job. I was trying to keep my status. The consequences (of losing a single tournament) are not as great.”

But, still, there were significant consequences on that Sunday at Pebble Beach. Besides re-starting the clock on another two-year exemption, the biggest paycheck of his life — $1.4 million, more than he’d earned in any single season of his career — was on the line. He’d also punch his ticket to The Masters for the first time, a lifelong dream, and earn entry to the PGA Championship. And, he’d climb comfortably into the top-30 on the FedEx Cup money list, and get a bump up the World Golf Rankings.

The final pair drew a 9:30 a.m. tee time. Taylor, who had never played with Mickelson, admitted to “always having first-tee jitters,” but handled himself well, with pars on the first two holes. Mickelson parred the first then birdied the second hole. The two were tied. Here we go.

Then, Taylor changed the script. He played like the steadfast veteran. He birdied four. He birdied five, as did Mickelson, and they headed to the par-5, 515-yard, sixth hole with Taylor leading by one.

Taylor’s approach landed in the right greenside bunker, leaving a 47-foot shot across the crested green on an exposed ridge with the wind blowing at gusts as high as 40 miles per hour. He coolly flipped it up to about 20 feet, then watched it roll across the long green expanse into the hole for an eagle. Maybe he learned a thing or two from that late-night YouTube session after all.

“The whole week, I felt good with wedges. [Former UW teammate] Richard Lee had helped me with my short game, and I felt more comfortable with it,” Taylor says. “Phil used to do that to other people. It’s fun to reflect back on it.”

The eagle gave Taylor the momentum he needed, but he said that a 12-foot par putt on the iconic, par-3 seventh was critical in keeping it.

“I didn’t waste any thoughts on anyone else,” Taylor says. “That can be distracting at times. It became a match-play scenario, just Phil and me.”

The howling wind affected all the players as the scores soared. At one point, Taylor had a five-stroke lead, but struggled with back-to-back bogeys on 11 and 12, followed by a double on the par-5 14th. Just like that, the lead was down to two.

“My lead was cut in half when Andie was driving to get Charlie,” Taylor says. “She must have been in torture, not knowing what was going on.”

Kevin Streelman, with birdies on 14 and 15 one group ahead, had passed Mickelson for second place, two strokes behind.

“It was trending in the wrong direction for Nick,” Thurmond recalls thinking, as he watched the final round on TV.

Taylor’s second shot to the par-4 15th landed in the short rough, 35 feet from the pin. That’s when he hit the shot of the tournament, and perhaps his life, holing out his chip shot for a birdie. It was yet another moment of wedge wizardry — and done right in front of perhaps the game’s most famous short game master.

“Looking back, that chip was incredible,” Thurmond says. “Winning any tournament is just extremely hard. You’re never safe. Even with a big lead, three up with three to play, you have to finish. There’s no clock to run out. You have to move the ball forward and put it in the hole.” “Nick played better than I did,’’ Mickelson told the media afterward.

Taylor said that hole-out “mentally calmed me down.” He then went on to birdie the tough, par-3 17th. That released the stress of dealing with the oceanside par-5 18th.

“Nick played better than I did,’’ Mickelson told the media afterward. “He holed a couple great shots. That eagle on six, the putts he made on four, five and seven. He just really played some great golf.”

Taylor won the 2007 Canadian Amateur Championship at age 18. He’s been the T world No. 1 amateur. He was the highest-finishing amateur at the 2009 U.S. Open, finishing 36th. He won the Ben Hogan Award (top collegiate player) in 2010. He tied for 16th at the 2019 Players Championship.

And, now, he has two victories on the PGA Tour.

“Lots of doors opened — bigger tournaments, majors I want to play in,” he says. “The Presidents Cup. And, it would be a huge honor to represent my country at the Olympics.’’

As big as his stare-down victory over Mickelson was, it would be better that it doesn’t become the defining moment of his career.

Taylor’s in his prime. He wants to win more. He wants to be competitive in majors. He wants to be among the best of his generation.

“We talk a lot about that,” Thurmond says. “For me, he’s a top-50 player in the world. He has been successful. He’s a veteran. What he’s done is very hard to do. I think he can get to the next level where he’s grouped with those who play regularly in the World Golf Championships, play in the Presidents Cup and compete and be a factor in the majors.”

Taylor wants all that and doesn’t see any reason why he can’t have it. He’s a more consistent player and believes he keeps improving. The victories will come.

“Hopefully,” he adds, “there’s not a sixyear gap until the next one.”