As LIV Golf threatens to create a new world order for professional golf, one of the biggest questions in the game can be boiled down to three words: Whither Phil Mickelson? Mercurial, strident, Machiavellian, the year-old Hall of Famer is, as has often been the case, engulfed in controversy.
Mickelson has refrained from saying anything of substance publicly about the upstart competitor to the PGA Tour, but his involvement in the birth of the tour is much more extensive than has been previously known; he laid out the details for me in a long phone call last November, as I was putting the finishing touches on my forthcoming book Phil: The Rip-Roaring and Unauthorized!
They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage. Indeed, Monahan has treated the LIV as an existential threat, warning that any player who signs on with the competition would be banned for life by the PGA Tour. The Tour has alluded to shadowy algorithms and metrics but refuses to make public how the money is being distributed, leaving no doubt it is merely a slush fund for Monahan to try to buy the loyalty of his superstars.
In his mind, two larger battles remain: the players taking possession of their media rights and a wholesale restructuring of how the players are governed. Each of these moments potentially could be turned into an NFT and sold to fans or collectors. The players need to own all of that. We played those shots, we created those moments, we should be the ones to profit. The Tour is supposed to be a nonprofit that distributes money to charity. How the fuck is it legal for them to have that much cash on hand?
But they always want more and more. They have to control everything. But are his grievances fueled by money or principle? With Mickelson, you can never be sure. Given the massive scale of his gambling losses—detailed elsewhere in the book, which, as it happens, can be preordered here —the Saudi seduction might be born of necessity. The only reason I could possibly imagine him doing that was him feeling serious financial pressure. It is an idealistic vision. Phil claims to have spent at least a dozen hours on the phone talking through these issues with Monahan, but found him to be unresponsive.
