After a year of (formal) back and forth on negotiations when, in the meantime, both the PGA tour and LIV Golf continued to develop their medium-term projects, it is possible to state that the merger scenario, envisaged in the agreement picture, won’t it see the light? According to Phil Mickelson this is so.
Phil Mickelson, statements
During an interview given to Bloomberg TV, the Californian left-hander responded as follows regarding the situation between the Tours: “We (LIV Golf, NDR) have the ability to use our social media platforms (in addition to the institutional profiles of the Saudi League, several Teams are very active NDR) with the aim of supporting the development of the game of golf in any way” “And something is already starting to change, or is already changing, on the PGA Tour” “This is a very positive sign for all of us.
The competition that the Tours provide each other makes all the Tours grow.” “So, is it necessary for a real merger to take place? Probably not”. Mickelson’s logic is not unrealistic: in a situation of absence of a hostile climate like the one in which the first two seasons of LIV Golf took place, the hypothesis of the merger under the umbrella of PGA Tour Enterprises may fail.
The Tours seasons have largely passed the halfway point. The time for final decisions is getting closer and closer. Philip Alfred Mickelson was born in San Diego, California, to parents Philip Mickelson Sr., an airline pilot and former naval aviator, and Mary Santos.
He grew up there and in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mickelson has Portuguese, Swedish and Sicilian ancestry. His maternal grandfather, Alfred Santos (also Mickelson’s middle name) was a caddy at the Pebble Beach Golf Links and took Phil golfing as a child.
He is one of 13 players in the history of golf to have won at least 3 of the 4 majors and also placed second in the US Open Championship six times without ever managing to win this tournament. With his victory in his second PGA Championship on May 23, 2021, he became, at 50 years, 11 months and 8 days, the oldest player to win one of the four major tournaments.
The exceptional performance on the Kiawah Island course – where he beat his compatriot Brooks Koepka and the South African Louis Oosthuizen, twenty years younger after a thrilling three-way duel – came eight years after the last major he won in 2013.
Mickelson, who had gradually slipped beyond the hundredth position in the world ranking, suddenly rose to number 32. Over the course of his almost thirty-year career he was in the top 10 in the world according to the Official World Golf Ranking for over 700 weeks, reaching second place on several occasions, but never first, in a period dominated by Tiger Woods, where Mickelson was one of the few rivals capable of putting him in difficulty.
In fact, thanks to an unscrupulous game (risky in jargon), made up of imaginative and sometimes impossible recoveries, he has often been able to keep up with athletes who are younger and in better shape than him. Particularly famous for his spectacular approaches (e.g. the Phil flop) he is considered among the best players in the history of golf around the green.