Forgotten fields stars2/21/2023 ![]() ![]() The PGA Tour was a dictatorship that prefers to ”divide and conquer.” He said the Saudis were “scary mother-(expletives)“ who were behind the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and who execute gays. The damning comments came in his interview with Alan Shipnuck for his unauthorized biography, when Mickelson made it clear he was working both sides of the aisle. ![]() Mickelson first referred to “leverage” when he was at the Saudi International in February. What emerged from that meeting were eyes toward 2024. Odds are there will be more changes before January. And then Tiger Woods and McIlroy led a private meeting of top players last month who pushed for a model where the elite play together all the time. The season will be shorter, the prize money higher, the fields smaller. There is no television partner yet, only a broadcast crew that artificially raises the hype and thus raises suspicion about the legitimacy of the product.Įven so, the PGA Tour was forced to respond by catering to the stars. There is no meaning to the LIV tournaments - that takes years. That enabled LIV Golf to overpay for a roster of players that includes 10 major champions, five of them still among the top 50 in the world, the other five well past their peak years. 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.Īll these years later, Mickelson became Norman’s chief recruiter and had the leverage he needed - an endless supply of Saudi cash from the Public Investment Fund. Lefty grudgingly accepted what he saw as baby steps to his big dreams. “Wouldn’t it be great if we had 20 events where everybody played together?” he said. This was in 2006, long before acronyms like PIP and PIF were part of the golf vernacular. 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. These changes are what Mickelson began preaching some 20 years ago, only then he was more passive than aggressive. Mickelson likes leverage, and he might have relished that as much as the reported $200 million signing bonus he got from LIV Golf. He just didn’t approach it the right way.” “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. He is as much a face of the Saudi-funded disruption in golf as Greg Norman. ![]() His name is the first one listed on an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour that has created so much animosity. His tour membership is not being renewed for this season. Mickelson won’t be part of a PGA Tour model he always wanted. The question now is whether he lost the war. So in that respect, Mickelson won a big part of his battle. 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. Mickelson has a right to feel somewhat vindicated by the bold and rapid changes coming to the PGA Tour. Much like his style of golf, Phil Mickelson’s imagination is only as good as his ability to pull off the shot. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |