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It’s Tuesday at Augusta National Golf Club in lovely northeastern Georgia. Tiger Woods advised the fawning media representatives that he is, indeed, planning to tee it up on Thursday for the opening round of The Masters golf tournament.
“As of right now, I feel like I am going to play, as of right now,” Woods said during a news conference. “I’m going to play nine more holes [Wednesday]. My recovery has been good. I’ve been very excited about how I’ve recovered each and every day, and that’s been the challenge.”
Just fourteen months after being severely injured in a one-car accident in southern California, Tiger Woods’ bionic right leg will be severely tested by walking 18 holes (about 6 miles) daily beginning Thursday over the very hilly golf course.
As CBS Television and the press covering this event rejoices that the 5-time winner will return to competitive golf on Thursday at Augusta, I am saddened that his biggest rival is not in the field and won’t be around to compete with golfers from twenty countries and thrill thousands of the golf patrons.
Phil Mickelson is missing this year.
Unlike Woods’ physical injuries, Phil is missing the annual event due to some recent self-inflicted verbal wounds that have been quite slow to heal.
The 51-year old Mickelson shocked the golf world last spring by winning the PGA Championship by, quite literally, coming out of nowhere to win his sixth career major. In doing so, Phil-the-Thrill became the oldest golfer (by two years) to win one of professional golf’s major championships.
Lefty’s best golf game has been known to disappear from sight at times during his long and splendid career, but now the man himself is AWOL from the illustrious golf field this week. Mickelson has been a part of The Masters’ field since 1994.
What’s up with Phil?
In a nutshell, Phil Mickelson recently placed himself into a self-imposed golf exile after getting into some hot water for comments related to a number of controversial golf-related subjects.
Phil openly flirted with joining a new (and quite lucrative) world golf tour being pushed by retired golf legend, Greg Norman.
The Asian Tour proposed playing a limited golf schedule (10 tournaments per year) with very lucrative prize purses. The events were scheduled to allow for periodic breaks to allow the game’s top stars to return to the US and Great Britain to compete in golf’s four major tournaments (The Masters, PGA Championship, US Open, and The Open Championship).
The PGA Tour immediately laid down the gauntlet to its players and effectively said, “If you want to play on this new tour, don’t bother coming back here!” Ouch! For the younger stars in professional golf, the PGA Tour represents the top of the golf profession. The young bucks were never likely to bolt.
However, for those golfers who have entered the second half of their professional careers, the guaranteed money being offered by the upstart Asian Tour was worthy of further investigation.
Statistically speaking, most PGA Tour winners are under the age of 35. For 51-year old Phil Mickelson (who has recorded 45 PGA victories – tied with Walter Hagen for 8th place – during his long career), the new Asian Tour might represent an easy way to pocket some significant late-career guaranteed money and cut down on his playing schedule.
Once Phil Mickelson turned 50 last year, he dabbled with the senior golfers by playing in a few of the Champions Tour events in 2021. Phil won the first two tournaments which he entered last year and even snagged the senior finale at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship event.
Phil Mickelson’s golf game is plenty good enough for the old guys’ tour, but this is a man who really thrives on competition. That’s probably why he had been leaning into the new Asian Tour as a way to earn a lot of guaranteed money while still playing against a few other prominent established golfers who (like Phil) are in the late stages of their career.
The new Asian Tour would like to secure an All-Star grouping of some of golf’s iconic names to play in their tournaments. The International Series – a set of new top-tier golf tournaments integrated with the traditional Asian Tour schedule – was launched this year and will see ten events played each year for the next decade. The inaugural event will be played this June featuring a $25 million total purse.
And that’s where this story starts to go off the rails for Phil Mickelson.
Before you hear “The Rest of the Story”, let’s take a brief timeout to remember that Phil Mickelson’s golf career has closely coincided with that guy named Tiger Woods. Woods is currently tied with Jack Nicklaus for the most PGA wins in tour history (82). Phil has competed against Tiger for decades. Due to that unfortunate timing, Mickelson knows that he would likely have won a lot more golf tournaments if his chief rival wasn’t playing during the same era.
On the plus side of playing in the Tiger Woods era, the amount of prize money paid by the PGA Tour over the past 25 years has been incredible. Phil Mickelson’s career earnings on the PGA Tour have reached nearly $95 million. He has earned multiples of that from corporate endorsements and commercials. In 2021 alone, a source indicated that Mickelson pocketed $2.7 million from playing professional golf but earned another $40 million through endorsement deals with nearly a dozen companies.
Phil Mickelson was the 29th highest paid athlete (all sports) in the world in 2021. Not too bad for a 51-year old guy!
At this point in Phil Mickelson’s career, he has started to miss a lot of 36-hole cuts (for which you aren’t paid at all) on the traditional PGA Tour. However, he still won the 2021 PGA Championship and was steamrolling the older guys on the Champions Tour. In the eyes of Phil Mickelson, you can certainly see how attractive Greg Norman’s new Asian Tour events could be to enhance his investment accounts at this stage of his career.
Though a handful of the top younger stars on the PGA Tour (such as Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson) apparently gave the new Asian Tour serious consideration, the vast majority of your golf stars have chosen to forego the big switch and have remained true to the PGA Tour.
The Asian Tour’s first event will be played in London in early June, but two more events are scheduled in the United States for July (one in Portland, Oregon and the other in New Jersey). The US will host two additional events in September in Boston and Chicago. For 2022, a total of eight new Asian Tour events will feature a whopping $255 million in prize money.
Several months ago, Phil Mickelson appeared ready to jump from the PGA Tour to the new Asian Tour – if the price was right.
Some reports indicated that Phil had been offered about $10 million in so-called “guaranteed money” in 2022 – regardless of how well he finishes in the actual events. For a 51-year old guy who earned a quarter of that last season by competing against players half his age on the PGA Tour, this could make great economic sense.
However, it came with a big downside. Players who jumped ship would be shunned by the PGA Tour (which steadfastly believes that its player/members should remain faithful to the cause).
In what the PGA Tour likely considered as treasonous, Phil Mickelson may have been caught saying that he had been attempting to “recruit” other current PGA stars to join him and play on the new Asian Tour. If that wasn’t bad enough, Phil inadvertently insulted the Saudi Arabian financial backers of the new golf league by referring to the sponsors as being (cleaned-up version) some very scary people.
Phil Mickelson’s relationship with the PGA Tour has never been smooth over the years.
In 2014, Phil and some associates were under investigation for possible insider trading involving a few New York Stock Exchange companies. Though he was ultimately able to resolve those issues, Mickelson’s long penchant for gambling had been a red flag which troubled the PGA Tour brass.
Arguably the second most popular golfer in the world behind Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson isn’t shy about letting loose with verbal shots at the PGA Tour’s executive suite about their tight-fisted control of the players and the Tour’s finances. A few months ago (while still contemplating the new Asian Tour), Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of sitting on an $800 million stockpile of cash which (in Phil’s opinion) should have been going to Tour charities or to the players or being spent to develop the game of golf worldwide.
Uh-oh.
The executive suite of the PGA Tour became enraged that one of their biggest stars had just thrown the professional golf organization under the proverbial bus. To my knowledge, the PGA Tour has yet to officially address Phil Mickelson’s current playing status (whether he is suspended or not). Nor has the PGA Tour (to my knowledge) addressed any of the issues which Phil raised about the organization’s purported $800 million largesse.
After igniting a few of these fires, Phil Mickelson issued a rather lengthy apology to everyone and stated that he was going to take time away from the game and spend more time with his family. Some might suggest that Mickelson effectively suspended himself from the PGA Tour for the time being. Many of Mickelson’s corporate sponsors used his hiatus to jump ship as the rats continue to scurry away from the currently-toxic golf star.
The PGA Tour has been notoriously quiet as to advising the golfing public about any disciplinary actions involving its members/players. Though the Champions Tour would have (before all this happened) welcomed Phil Mickelson onto the old timer’s tour with open arms beginning this season, the senior circuit is a part of the PGA Tour, too. That means the Phil’s punishment (if quietly being assessed by the PGA Tour) would apply any chances to play golf this year on the geezer tour as well.
Before this recent dust-up, Phil Mickelson was also in line for a prime television color analyst spot whenever he wanted to hang-up his cleats in trade for a microphone at the 18th green. He has been wildly popular when appearing on network golf telecasts.
What happens next? Phil Mickelson won’t be teeing-it up at Augusta National Golf Club on Thursday morning for the first time in 28 years. For a golf tournament which traditionally embraces its former champions, the long-time gallery favorite and three-time Masters champion has mysteriously vanished this week.
Since this is a man who has always marched to his own drum, I believe that Phil Mickelson will re-emerge and play golf again this summer as part of the new Asian Tour. I can’t see him being happy to join the Champions Tour (at least not this season). Mickelson has stated in the past that he does not want to keep playing competitive golf unless he is competing at the highest level.
Phil Mickelson, like Tiger Woods, has helped to build interest in golf and make it fun to watch. Here’s hoping that this will eventually have a happy ending for both Phil and all golf fans!
Enjoy The Masters!