GOLF/Preview: Phil Mickelson, the world number four but the number one Tiger Woods irritant, resumes work this week in the BellSouth Classic here after a month's paternity leave.

He and his wife, Amy's, third child, Evan Samuel, arrived three weeks late, causing him to miss three tournaments, including last week's Players' Championship, and disrupting his pre-US Masters routine.

Not that he cares. He is, and always has been, a family man, and yesterday recommended marriage and kids to all, and especially to Woods. The latter, who is not playing this week, is probably the world's most eligible bachelor and most golfers on the US Tour, not necessarily altruistically, want to see him married off.

"Tiger is missing out," said Mickelson yesterday. "Someone who has not experienced the joys of finding their life's partner, experienced the joys of having children and a family of their own, is really missing out.

"That's something I wouldn't trade for the world, and I think that Tiger definitely wants that. I don't think it will affect his golf one bit when it does happen."

But Woods is not a man who takes advice except from those from whom he solicits it. Mickelson has already infuriated him once this season when he suggested the Nike-contracted number one was using inferior equipment. Lifestyle advice might be similarly unwelcome.

But Mickelson is sincere in his thoughts. When his wife was expecting their second child the due date was the week of the 2001 US Open at Pinehurst. Had it been any other tournament he would not even have been there. But he went and, as luck would have it, was in contention.

Despite that, he carried a pager on the course and, had it gone off, he would immediately have departed the scene and flown home in the private jet that was kept waiting. He even assured everyone that that would have been the situation over the closing holes when he was in a desperate duel with the late Payne Stewart for the title.

Stewart won, but only by holing a 20-footer on the 72nd hole to prevent a play-off the following day. Had he not done so, and had the word come that Amy had gone into labour, Mickelson would have forfeited the chance of his first major championship, such is the strength of his belief that family comes first. In fact, his daughter Sophia arrived the day after the Open.

Padraig Harrington is another who has family matters on his mind these days, as he and wife Caroline are expecting their first child later this summer. The Dubliner, first and second in his last two strokeplay events in America and €1 million richer because of it, hopes to show his liking for US Tour life again this week.

While Colin Montgomerie has pulled out and returned home to ponder a five-week spell in which he failed to break 70 in any round, Harrington puts his growing reputation on the line in Atlanta.

Conqueror of Woods in the Target World Challenge in California in December, the Ryder Cup player was denied only by a brilliant closing round from Davis Love in the Players' last Sunday.

Now he returns to a Sugarloaf course where he opened with rounds of 69 and 65 last year to be only one shot off the lead before slipping back to eighth place.

Harrington, up to eighth in the world and the leading European for the first time, is one of 24 players in the tournament with one eye on next week's Masters.

With Woods and Love both resting and Ernie Els giving the wrist he injured hitting a punchbag time to recover, the two big names the Dubliner will be trying to bring down this time are Mickelson and defending champion Retief Goosen.

Harrington is not a member of the US Tour yet, but on his website he has mapped out a schedule for this season which sees him playing 13 of his 29 events in the United States.

And his determination to be ready for the Majors is shown by the fact that he will cross the Atlantic early for each of them.

The schedule does not have the Volvo PGA Championship at Wentworth - the European Tour's flagship event - on it. Harrington has never managed a top-10 finish there and instead he is set to play in the following week's Memorial Tournament in Ohio en route to the US Open in Chicago two weeks later.

He is also down to play the International event in Colorado the week before the US PGA Championship - just before the scheduled birth of his first child.

Also in the field this week are 1999 British Open champion Paul Lawrie, who has taken the place vacated by fellow Scot Montgomerie, and English pair Luke Donald and John Morgan.

Donald's missed cut last week dashed his hopes of a Masters debut, while Morgan is fast discovering the standards necessary to compete in America.

It would hardly be possible to be further down the pecking order from Mickelson than the Englishman John E Morgan - the middle initial is irrelevant but necessary in America - who is in his rookie season on the US Tour. The remarkable thing about Morgan is that he would be in his rookie season on any tour, and in attempting to play on the richest circuit in the world he is either brave or foolhardy, depending whom you ask.

He turned professional less than a year ago, had some success on the European Challenge Tour and then managed to qualify for both the full European Tour and the regular US Tour. He finished 11th at the US qualifying school, an extraordinary achievement but one that has been, so far, the highlight of his career. This year he has played six events, missing the cut in half of them and finishing well down the field in the others.

Guardian Service