A STRAIGHT SHOT FROM THE HEART.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Phil Mickelson caused a commotion when he set his priorities down like a Cessna on the first fairway at the U.S. Open. For days people have been carrying on as if he's piloting fatherhood into a whole new frontier.

With Mickelson's wife Amy due to deliver their first child any day and Mickelson adamant about attending the birth even if it costs him a chance at his first major title, the announcers in the primmest and most proper of sports have been prattling on about water breaking, not putts.

If you ask us, it's the best thing to happen to golf broadcasting since Johnny Miller.

Enough, already, about golfers who go to Japan for months at a time, chasing the pot of gold while their spouses remain back in the States raising the children. Some nuclear family, that. And don't aggravate us with stories of athletes who casually, carelessly father children they have no intention of claiming, much less raising.

You ought to know, when it comes to his commitment to fatherhood, Mickelson's not flying solo. Anymore, he's not even flying in the face of convention. Winger Brian Bellows of the Washington Capitals flew home between Games 1 and 2 of the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals to be with his wife during the birth of their second child and Detroit Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman nearly missed a game in this year's playoffs because he insisted on attending the birth of his third child.

If Mickelson thinks his yet-to-be-born daughter is weighing on his mind now, just wait until she's old enough to miss him. Just wait until she can tug on his pant legs as well as his paternal instincts.

Mickelson is lucky that way. The Scottsdale resident won't have to look far for athletes who have balanced with uncommon grace the sometimes conflicting interests of professional sports and parenting.

Fellow golfer and Scottsdale resident Tom Lehman, for example, can tell him a really long drive isn't 325 yards - it's the five miles back to your hotel on a Saturday night of a PGA Tour event after seeing your wife and kids off at the airport.

And Matt Williams, a slugger for the Arizona Diamondbacks, can tell Mickelson a sacrifice isn't a way of advancing runners, it's a conscious life decision.

What they have to say, fathers everywhere probably could stand to hear it.

``The most important thing to remember,'' said Williams, ``is when you're on your deathbed, do you want to be able to say, `Jeez, I made a million bucks' or do you want to be able to say you were a good father? It's all a matter of putting your priorities in order.''

Two years ago Williams was on a Cleveland team that advanced to the World Series. He had reached the pinnacle of his profession. He should have been ecstatic. Instead, he was miserable.

He and his first wife had split and she was living in Phoenix with the couple's three children. He missed his two daughters and son. They visited him often that summer, but it wasn't the same. The children's lives were scattered in two cities and they began to show the strain.

``It got to the point where they didn't want to get on that damn plane again,'' Williams said.

Cleveland was the perfect place for Williams, the ballplayer. But he also knew baseball wouldn't be there to comfort him in his old age and neither would his kids, if he didn't do something. So Williams asked for - and was granted - a trade to the expansion Diamondbacks. For the sake of his relationship with his kids, he went from one of the best teams in major-league baseball to one of the worst.

The move has worked out well for everyone. The second-year Diamondbacks have one of the best records in baseball, Williams leads the National League in runs batted in and his children are a lot happier now that their dad is a constant presence in their lives.

``This game doesn't allow you to have the perfect family life under the best of circumstances,'' Williams said. ``You have to try to do the best you can. Because baseball doesn't last forever.''

The PGA Tour season can stretch from January to December if golfers let it. As it is, Lehman spends half the year on the road. ``I don't get to sleep at home nearly enough,'' he has lamented.

The itinerant life was OK when his children were preschoolers. They could be carted along with the carry-on luggage from one event to the next. But now his two daughters are 9 and 6 and his son is almost 4. They are growing up. They have lives that clash with their dad's nomadic existence.

Lehman dotes on them whenever he can. Some athletes hurt themselves by punching walls or striking water coolers or throwing patrons through bar windows; Lehman required surgery on his right shoulder last year when he injured it performing handstands for his children before the British Open.

It's awesome and awful when his family accompanies him on Tour. They have a great time, until wife Melissa and the kids have to return home to their lives. The goodbyes can be heartrending. On the weekend of the Heritage Classic in Hilton Head, S.C., in April, Lehman stood with his daughters in the galley of a flight bound for Atlanta until the plane was ready to push back.

Both girls cried when he disappeared up the jetway and his younger daughter, Holly, sobbed, ``I want my daddy,'' until after takeoff.

It would be two weeks before she would get her daddy back.

All too soon, Lehman will have to let his daughters go. But he doesn't have to tell Mickelson that. He'll find out fast enough.

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PHOTO Phil Mickelson says he will attend the birth of his first daughter, even if it costs him the U.S. Open.

Doug Mills/Associated Press