So that’s what I get for talking to a player’s coach minutes before he tees off at the Masters. What was Butch Harmon supposed to say, that Phil Mickelson was going to shoot a third-round 75 and fall from contention?

Mickelson fans shouldn’t feel so bad, though. Lefty didn’t see it coming, either.

He fell nine strokes from the lead with his 3-over round. Sunday, he’ll be paired with Vijay Singh, a long way from another Green Jacket for two Masters champions.

“I felt really good, I got off to a good start … I don’t know where it came from,” a chagrined Mickelson said afterward. “I didn’t feel bad. I felt I was going to have a good round.”

It was fine until Mickelson bogeyed the par-5 eighth, where a bounce off the flagstick kept him from having a tap-in birdie. Instead, he three-putted from about 30 feet. He bogeyed Nos. 10 and 12, before rallying with birdies at Nos. 13 and 14.

But he essentially lost another shot by not making birdie at the par-5 15th, then dropped one in the bunker at the 16th, leading to a double-bogey five. He also drilled his approach at No. 18 into the television camera platform, and made a great par save from near the ninth green.

I’ve seen Lefty pull several of his iron shots the last couple rounds, miss greens long and struggle to correct it. It cost him a few more times Saturday.

“I thought there were some low scores out there. I just didn’t shoot one of them,” Mickelson said.