U.S. Open 2017: Phil Mickelson will need a 4-hour delay to make his tee time at Erin Hills

With his daughter’s graduation making an on-time arrival impossible, we’re going to be on Phil watch until Thursday afternoon at the U.S. Open.

Major championship weeks are not your average weeks in golf. Everything about the week, from Monday through Sunday night, is bigger. The practice round days are covered wall-to-wall, talking heads yap for hours, and wretches like me fill up the pages with content. While you may not pay attention until things get going on Thursday during a regular PGA Tour event, at a major, there’s so much to chew on in the run-up to getting balls in the air for the first round.

This week, the biggest focal point of all that coverage may be on a guy who is unlikely to even play the U.S. Open. The Phil Mickelson flight watch we’re getting tuned up for on Thursday has become one of my favorite stories of the golf year. When he first announced at the Memorial last weekend that he was skipping the U.S. Open, it was a stunner. Then the shock quickly subsided and you started looking at all the Phil angles and plays he could be trying to make here. Was this a big eff-you to the USGA, which he’s battled with over the years? Was it a power play to put more pressure on the person responsible for graduation scheduling at his daughter’s school? Was it a protest about going to another untested “quirky,” as he called it, course for a U.S. Open?

There always seems to be more there with Phil. It didn’t seem possible that he was definitely out for the U.S. Open. But it was pretty simple — the schedule makes it almost impossible and he’s putting his daughter ahead of the U.S. Open, the white whale of his career and last remaining leg of a career slam.

After the Saturday round at Memorial, he clarified and left the door slightly ajar. He confirmed he was not withdrawing from the U.S. Open but was not going to play unless there were “unforeseen circumstances.” As he explained, that basically boiled down to two things 1) something happening with the graduation that would force the time and/or date to change 2) storms throwing off the first round schedule at Erin Hills.

Phil’s daughter, Amanda, is a speaker at a high school graduation that begins at 10 a.m. PT in the San Diego area. With Phil not officially withdrawing, that meant the USGA had to give him a tee time, which they set for 2:20 p.m. CT in Wisconsin. After the announcement and the usual round of intrigue and jokes that follow every Phil story, we got some more optimism from the initial declaration. When the his tee times came out, Mickelson told Tim Rosaforte of Golf World that, “I can still make it. You never know. I think it’s possible.”

Phil has one of the nicer private jets but there’s just no way it can happen if things stay on schedule. On Sunday, he provided more exact details of what he thinks needs to happen in order for him to play in the 2017 U.S. Open. Speaking with CBS’ Amanda Balionis after his round at the St. Jude Classic, Mickelson said he needs a four-hour weather delay on Thursday in order to make it to the course on time. Here’s his estimate:

Phil also seems to be keeping a close eye on the central Wisconsin weather forecast, telling Balionis that the five-day forecast had originally called for 60 percent chance of storms on Thursday but that percentage had gone down significantly. Right now, we’re at just 10 percent chance of rain on Thursday, the lowest of all four tournament days.

Mickelson did also add that he is not going to go up to Erin Hills and do any scouting of the course that almost the entire field has never played. So he’d be going in blind if he is able to race to the tee box on time after a Thursday delay.

So it’s going to take a miracle, but that won’t stop us from having fun with it until Phil is either officially out or officially in on Thursday afternoon. FOX should have a flight watch going as an integral part of its first-round broadcast. It’s an incredible story for those of us who are familiar with the Phil oeuvre.