There were so many questions I wanted to ask Phil Mickelson Wednesday.

What kind of shape is his game in?

What kind of shape is his head in?

Did he really lose 25 pounds of fat, then add 15 pounds of muscle?

Unfortunately, Mickelson blew off his scheduled news conference, so there’s no way to know if he’s emotionally recovered from his collapse on the 72nd hole of last year’s U.S. Open, which rendered the quote of the year:

“I’m such an idiot.”

Nor is there much to be gleaned from the transcript of Mickelson’s interview before the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic two weeks ago.

Mickelson blamed his horrendous Ryder Cup performance – he went 0-4-1 – on having the body of a lumpy sofa, thus the renewed commitment to exercise. He said he worked with his swing coach, Rick Smith, to eliminate the tee shots that would veer left, bounce off a hospitality tent on the final hole of a major and lead to a double bogey.

He even went deeper into the karma bag, saying that dead former presidents of the USGA were looking down at him and proclaimed no one should win the U.S. Open hitting two of 14 fairways.

(They must have spoken up on his backswing.)

The one question Mickelson couldn’t answer, however, is the one question on everybody’s mind: Can he still win a major, or will he go postal again the next time he has a lead on Sunday?

Perhaps it’s unfair to wonder about Mickelson’s psyche. After all, he’s hit far harder recovery shots than he’s faced with now.

Mickelson was 0-for-42 in the majors after 11 years on the PGA Tour – and considered golf’s preeminent choke artist – but he exorcised those demons by winning the 2004 Masters, the 2005 PGA and the 2006 Masters.

As Mickelson recently told Golf World magazine in a rare moment of unfiltered candor, “I’ve won three freakin’ majors and 29 tournaments. It’s a little different than having never won, then blowing a lead.”

Australian import Geoff Ogilvy, who was the benefactor of Mickelson’s brain lock at the Open, buys that reasoning.

“It’d be more difficult for me (to recover) than Phil because Phil already has won majors,” Ogilvy said. “He knows he can hit the shots.”

And yet, Mickelson wouldn’t be the first player whose career was sidetracked by an epic collapse.

Arnold Palmer blew a seven-shot lead over Billy Casper with nine holes left in the 1966 U.S. Open; he never won another major. Thirty years later, Greg Norman lost a six-shot advantage over Nick Faldo in the Masters. Like Palmer, Norman finished his career without another triumph in golf’s foremost tournaments.

Mickelson has done nothing this year, although it’s early, to suggest he’s of sound swing and mind. He tied for 45th at the Bob Hope, then tied for 51st at the Buick Invitational, a tournament he’s won three times.

It’s the first time in his career Mickelson, a notorious fast starter, has finished outside the top 30 in his first two starts.

A year ago, the golf world was celebrating his successes. Now, his head is being examined to see if there’s a lasting scar.

Mickelson has shut up the amateur psychologists once.

Can he do it again?