Still 2½ hours before his name was announced on the tee, Lefty was on the putting green, circling around a cup from three feet away trying to make 100 in a row.

"It's been a long day," Mickelson said as he left Friday evening. "I'm tired."

That wasn't surprising, and neither was his position atop the leaderboard in the Ford Championship at Doral.

In a classic case of practice paying off, Mickelson is on the kind of tear that would make Johnny Miller proud. He got around the Blue Monster without a bogey Friday, posting a 6-under 66 that gave him a two-shot lead over Billy Andrade heading into the weekend.

Mickelson was at 14-under 130, the ninth consecutive round of stroke play in which he had at least a share of the lead. That dates to the 60 he shot in the second round in Phoenix.

Miller, now an analyst for NBC Sports, routinely blistered fields during the early part of the PGA Tour season in the 1970s. So perhaps it was only appropriate that as the telecast ended, Miller looked at the leaderboard and found Mickelson's lead to be larger than it was.

Andrade, despite a bogey on the 18th hole after hitting into the water, shot 66 and was at 132. Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal had a 69 and was at 11-under 133. Billy Mayfair (67) was another shot back.

And then came a large group of heavyweights - Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Match Play champion David Toms, defending Doral champion Craig Parry - among 11 players at 9-under 135.

Miller suggested that none of the three players immediately behind Mickelson would be around Sunday, effectively giving Lefty a five-shot lead.

Mickelson wasn't ready to concede anything.

"There's so many good players right there," he said. "I just feel like I've got to keep pushing to make birdies if I want to stay there. There's so many guys at 9 under par that I guaranteed tomorrow some of those guys will shoot 6, 7, 8 under par. So I have to come out firing."

No one has been firing on all cylinders quite like Mickelson, whose average second-round score is 64.8. He won Phoenix by five shots, went wire-to-wire to win at Pebble Beach by four shots, and shows no sign of slowing down.

"I don't know what the big hoopla about him is," Andrade said. "He's one of the best players in the world. He has been one of the best players in the world since he was 12. When you get guys that are that talented and you get on rolls, they're obviously tough to beat."

There were so many players jockeying for position that when Sergio Garcia missed a par putt on the 18th hole, he dropped 10 spots on the leaderboard, down to 8-under 136 with the likes of Retief Goosen and Jim Furyk.

When Andrade chipped in from 50 feet for birdie on the ninth hole, that broke a 10-way tie for the lead. Before long, it became a race between him and Mickelson to see who wound up on top going into the weekend. They were on different sides of the course, and the final hole was decisive.

Andrade finished on the 18th hole, and he pulled his tee shot into the water. After taking a drop and hitting into shaggy grass atop a bunker, he had to make a slick 20-footer simply to salvage a bogey.

"Sometimes you make good 5s and sometimes you make really bad 5s," Andrade said. "That was a great 5."

Mickelson finished on the par-3 ninth with a 7-iron into 8 feet for his 16th birdie of the tournament.

"There's still two days left here, and I'm going to put up a great fight," Andrade said. "And hopefully, it's enough to beat him and everybody else."

The Blue Monster, already susceptible without strong wind, was softer because of overnight rain and it continued to drizzle into the morning round Friday.

The best anyone did among the early starters was 9 under, although Woods was kicking himself.

He holed a 25-foot birdie putt straight down the hill on the 18th, and made his fourth straight birdie with a beautiful bunker shot from an awkward lie on the par-5 first. That put him 11 under, two shots clear of the early starters.

And then it all fell apart.

He three-putted from the fringe on No. 2, running his first putt about 10 feet by. Then he got fooled by the wind, hitting a 7-iron too flush and flat. It went long, and his chip raced 12 feet past the cup. He made his third straight bogey by coming up short and right on the par-3 fourth and taking two shots to get to the green.

"My bogeys were caused by a couple of three-putts, and then on top of that, I made some poor decisions in my commitment into the greens," Woods said.

Singh figured the lead would be somewhere around 12 under par, "unless Phil goes and does another one of his magical things," he said.

It wasn't magical, just another solid round of golf that left Mickelson in a familiar spot.