Mickelson won’t be part of a PGA Tour model he always wanted. His tour membership is not being renewed for this season. His name is the first one listed on an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour that has created so much animosity. He is as much a face of the Saudi-funded disruption in golf as Greg Norman.

September 6, 2022
Much like his style of golf, Phil Mickelson’s imagination is only as good as his ability to pull off the shot, writes the AP.

Mickelson has a right to feel somewhat vindicated by the bold and rapid changes coming to the PGA Tour. The idea — his idea, he can argue — is for the top players to compete against each other as often as 17 times, maybe more, for an average purse of $20 million.

So in that respect, Mickelson won a big part of his battle.

The question now is whether he lost the war.

Mickelson won’t be part of a PGA Tour model he always wanted. His tour membership is not being renewed for this season. His name is the first one listed on an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour that has created so much animosity. He is as much a face of the Saudi-funded disruption in golf as Greg Norman.

Was he right? Does it matter?

“As much as I probably don’t want to give Phil any sort of credit at all, yeah, there were certain points that he was trying to make,” Rory McIlroy said. “But there’s a way to go about them. … He just didn’t approach it the right way.”

McIlroy spoke of collaboration. Mickelson likes leverage, and he might have relished that as much as the reported $200 million signing bonus he got from LIV Golf.

Mickelson wouldn’t use the word “vindication” in an interview last week with Morning Read on SI.com. This was Mickelson trying to take the high road, a path he prefers only when he suspects he’s right.

“All players should be appreciative of what LIV is doing,” Mickelson told Morning Read. “The players on LIV for the opportunity they are getting. And the PGA Tour for the leverage that was provided to get these changes done.”

These changes are what Mickelson began preaching some 20 years ago, only then he was more passive than aggressive. Change eventually came in the form of the FedEx Cup, a new model to bring the best players together at the end of the season in a series that culminated with the biggest payoff in golf.

Mickelson wanted more. This was in 2006, long before acronyms like PIP and PIF were part of the golf vernacular.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had 20 events where everybody played together?” he said.

Lefty grudgingly accepted what he saw as baby steps to his big dreams. Most telling from that January day in 2006 was his admiration for Norman — “A brilliant individual,” Mickelson called him — and the Shark’s ideas for golf.

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