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The 150th Open Championship kicks off Thursday morning at the historic Old Course at St. Andrews and one of the men who will be teeing it up is an older fella out of California who has won this major before.
The dude I’m talking about goes by the name Phil Mickelson. He’s a lefty who has won a bunch of times on Tour and has six major championship victories on his resume.
Lefty, as fans have called him for years, has been a shell of himself since he ripped into the PGA Tour in February. He was apparently mad at the Tour for making him $94,955,060 in career earnings and wanted to go join a Saudi-backed league ran by people who he called “scary (expletives)” to teach the PGA Tour a lesson, or whatever.
Mickelson went into hiding after making those comments and wasn’t seen again until he teed it up in LIV Golf’s first event last month in London, where he shot 10-over in the three-round exhibition and finished tied for 33rd place (out of 48 players).
But in all honesty, he’s still very much in hiding and has nobody to blame for that but himself.
This should have been another week to celebrate Mickelson for all that he’s accomplished in this game, which has been a lot. This should have been another week of Lefty making funny videos on social media about hitting high bombs at the Old Course. This should have been another week of wondering if the 2021 PGA champ could somehow win another major in his 50s.
Instead, he skipped out on the champions dinner last night, didn’t play in the awesome Celebration of Champions event on Monday, and will tee off at 2:30 a.m. ET tomorrow with Lucas Herbert and Kurt Kitayama and be done with his first round before most of us are even awake.
Oh, and his only two Instagram posts in the last 20 weeks have been two statements he made about his comments and about his decision to join LIV.
Mickelson will likely miss the cut this week. His golf game has been terrible since his return. After that 10-over finish in London he went 11-over through two rounds at the U.S. Open and missed the cut. Then he went to Portland for another LIV event and finished in a tie for 40th place at 10-over.
None of that is very good, at all.
It’s too bad Phil had to take the path he took. It’s too bad he couldn’t have had fun with all the other past champions last night. It’s too bad he has continued to make empty statements about the people who run LIV Golf.
This is a very special week for golf as we all celebrate the 150th playing of The Open Championship at the home of golf – St. Andrews. The days leading up to the tournament have felt so special, with players taking it all in and legends of the game standing right there with them.
Mickelson, however, has been in the background all week, a place he and his big personality has never liked to be. But it’s a place he sent himself to and it’s a place he’ll likely remain for quite some time.
Quick hits: Panthers punter sells jersey number to Baker Mayfield… KD asks fans about their legacies… Max Homa’s perfect Tiger Woods tweet… And more.
– Panthers punter Johnny Hecker had a great reaction after selling his jersey number to Baker Mayfield.
– NBA fans had a lot of funny answers to Kevin Durant’s tweet about adding to your legacy.
– Max Homa had the perfect tweet after he found out he’ll be playing with Tiger Woods in the first two rounds of The Open and golf fans loved it.
– Charles Curtis looks at 9 wild possible Donovan Mitchell trades.
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