Phil Mickelson Is Back To Throwing Haymakers at the PGA Tour

Chris Trotman/LIV Golf. Getty Images.

After his genuinely jaw-dropping interview with Alan Shipnuck dropped in February—you know, the one where called the Saudi Arabians "scary motherfuckers" but said dealing with them is worth it to change the PGA Tour—the always boisterous Phil Mickelson put his tail between his legs and laid low for a while. He quite literally didn't appear in public for a few months and skipped his title defense at the PGA Championship. When he returned to competition at the first LIV Golf event in June, he did so wearing mostly logo-less clothes and was rather subdued throughout the week. His first press conference at the U.S. Open was difficult to watch; he looked older, a beaten man grappling with being a social pariah, wanting to be anywhere beside that interview room. 

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A few months have passed since, and Phil is back to being Phil. And we're not just referring to his golf game, which has made some modest strides over the past few weeks—he closed the Chicago event with the best round of the day and shot four straight rounds in the 60s last week in Bangkok. No, Phil's back throwing haymakers at the mic. 

LIV's got a home game this week with its Jeddah event in Saudi Arabia, and Lefty took to the stand to answer some questions from the (very brave) media that made the trip to the Kingdom. One of which was about his involvement with LIV, and how he now views his interview with Shipnuck in hindsight. 

His response: What interview?

"So, I will reiterate I never did an interview with Alan Shipnuck."

Now thattttttt is one helluva spin zone. We know what he means here—Phil claimed his talk with Shipnuck was off the record, so he'd classify it as a "conversation" rather than an interview. But Phil's a shrewd guy, and by saying this he's trying to distance himself from words that he admitted he said and even apologized for. But that wasn't even the best Phil dagger of this presser. 

"I think going forward you have to pick a side," he said of the PGA Tour vs. LIV battle. "You have to pick what side do you think is going to be successful. 

"I firmly believe that I'm on the winning side of how things are going to evolve and shape in the coming years for professional golf…until both sides sit down and have a conversation and work something out, both sides are going to continue to change and evolve. And I see LIV Golf is trending upwards, and I see the PGA Tour trending downards and I love the side that I'm on…I love the way they involve us and listen to us in decisions."

Not a huge surprise to see Phil so firmly in the LIV camp seeing as he admitted (to Shipnuck) that he helped lawyers draft the league initially as a leverage play against the PGA Tour. Now that those comments are in his rearview mirror, he's sharpened the knives—and got a henna tattoo of his own logo on his hand, which looks…odd—and looks ready to return to throwing haymakers at Ponte Vedra Beach.

Oh, and about that hypothetical conversation between the PGA Tour and LIV? That's not going to happen anytime soon, due largely to the lawsuit initially titled Mickelson vs. PGA Tour that he has since withdrawn from. The PGA Tour countersued, so this is all tied up in court and won't be resolved until well into 2023 at the earliest, so Lefty knows that conversation isn't a thing that's going to take place. Oh, Phil.