MICKELSON WON’T DEFEND PGA CROWN
PHIL WITHDRAWS FROM TOURNEY AMID CONTINUING SAUDI FLAP
Phil Mickelson withdrew Friday from the PGA Championship, electing to extend his hiatus from golf after incendiary comments he made about a Saudi-funded rival league he supports and the PGA Tour he accused of greed.
Mickelson authored one of the most stunning victories last year when he won the PGA at Kiawah Island, South Carolina, at age 50. That made him the oldest champion in 161 years of the major championships.
Now a popular phrase from a decade ago — ‘‘What will Phil do next?’’ — carries more intrigue than excitement.
The PGA of America announced Mickelson’s decision on social media. The PGA Championship starts Thursday at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Mickelson hasn’t played since Feb. 6 at the Saudi International, where he accused the PGA Tour of ‘‘obnoxious greed’’ in an interview with Golf Digest.
Two weeks later, in an excerpt from Alan Shipnuck’s unauthorized biography to be released next week, Mickelson revealed how he had been working behind the scenes to promote the rival league funded by the Public Investment Fund and run by Greg Norman.
Mickelson dismissed Saudi Arabia’s human-rights atrocities, including the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, by saying it was worth it if it meant gaining leverage to get the changes he wanted on the PGA Tour.
Mickelson met the deadline to sign up for the PGA Championship on April 25, though his manager said it was more about keeping his options open. He also entered the U.S. Open and said he would ask for a conflicting-event release to play the LIV Golf Invitational in London, the first of Norman’s $20 million tournaments. The tour said this week it wouldn’t grant any releases.
Mickelson is the first major champion not to defend his title since Rory McIlroy at St. Andrews in 2015 because of a knee injury suffered while playing soccer. He is only the third PGA champion not to defend his title in the last 75 years. Tiger Woods didn’t play in 2008 while recovering from reconstructive knee surgery, and Ben Hogan couldn’t play in 1949 while recovering from his car getting struck by a bus.
‘‘I personally think it’s an unbelievable mental challenge to come back and play after what he’s put himself through,’’ sixtime major champion and CBS golf analyst Nick Faldo said Wednesday. ‘‘I don’t think it’s as easy as . . . arriving at a golf tournament and playing. The attention is going to be monumental.’’
Now the attention shifts to whether Mickelson will defy the tour by playing in London in three weeks or whether he will go to the U.S. Open — the only major he never has won — the week after that in Brookline, Massachusetts. The last time he played a tournament in the United States was in late January.
Shipnuck’s book is scheduled to be released Tuesday. Among the excerpts he already has published on his ‘‘Firepit Collective’’ site included Mickelson saying he recruited players to pay attorneys to write the operating agreement of a new league.
‘‘We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights,’’ Mickelson said. ‘‘They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.’’