Phil: PGA blocking LIV points
Phil Mickelson, who has been prone to drop his share of verbal bombshells, was at it again on Wednesday in advance of LIV Golf ’s season-ending tournament in Miami. The veteran golfer accused the PGA Tour of having a part in blocking LIV players from receiving world ranking points. Mickelson also stated with certainty that more players from the PGA Tour will want to join LIV Golf.
“I know that’s going to happen,” he said. “When players look at LIV, they are wanting to be part of it. Everybody here is happy and enjoying what we are doing and enjoying the team aspect of it and enjoying each other and the camaraderie and enjoying playing golf globally and all the benefits that come with playing this tour.
“So, there’s a lot of players that see that and want to be a part of it. The question is how many spots are available? There’s a lot more players that want to come than there are spots.”
Mickelson has been adamant about the PGA Tour’s commitment to hit goals in its network TV contracts as part of its desire to keep LIV Golf players from getting world rankings points. The Official World Golf Ranking committee last week denied LIV members from acquiring those points.
“I do want to bring to light as to why exactly they are doing what they are doing,’’ said Mickelson, one of the first players to sign with LIV Golf in 2022. “It’s not what they are putting out there on the front page. There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes as to the importance of us to the getting points to the PGA Tour.
“I think that the majors need to protect their product, and there’s probably other ways that they can do that by creating slots [in their fields]. If they want to make sure they have the best fields in golf, they could create vehicles for players on LIV to play in majors where they don’t have to use the [world rankings], which would undermine the TV contract and revenue of the PGA Tour if they gave points to LIV.”
LIV Golf events consist of 48 players, and that tour has a relegation system, with the bottom four players in the points standings relegated at the end of the season.
Peter Dawson, the OWGR chairman, recently stated in a letter to LIV CEO Greg Norman that the primary reason LIV Golf players are not getting world ranking points is because of its lack of pathways to the league as well as a relegation system that doesn’t promote enough player turnover. Dawson described it as a “closed shop,” but added that LIV could resubmit its application. Mickelson shot that theory down. “I’m just bringing facts to life as to, like, why that’s happening,” he said Wednesday of LIV’s application being denied. “But really, we as a group, as a league that’s trying to grow the game and bring it globally and promote the game throughout the world, as well as bring something different than the old, stodgy format that we’ve had for decades, we just need to focus on what we are doing and make our product as good as possible, as interesting as possible. We need to make tweaks into our program.
“The OWGR need to obviously make tweaks, but we need to tweak our format to continue to evolve and be more interesting and easier to understand. We have enough on our plate to make our product more and more exciting and appealing that we shouldn’t worry ourselves with what they are doing.”
Mickelson, as he did last week in social media posts, said he’s certain that the PGA Tour was behind the decision to keep LIV players out of the ranking system so that PGA Tour players would be higher in the rankings, which would help with its network television contracts. He said the networks have OWGR clauses that could cause a refund in fees if certain minimums are not met.
The PGA Tour has denied that assertion, claiming it doesn’t have any such agreements with the networks.