Editor’s note: While acknowledging the controversy surrounding LIV Golf, the Star has decided to cover its tournament in Tucson as a sporting event.
Tucson and Phil Mickelson have always had a unique connection.
Mickelson previously owned the exclusive Stone Canyon Golf Club, which hosted the “The Match,” a made-for-TV event in 2021. From 2007-2011, Mickelson competed in WGC Match Play at Dove Mountain, before the tournament uprooted and moved to San Francisco and now Austin, Texas.
But Mickelson’s fondest memory of playing golf in Tucson was in 1991, when he won the Tucson Open at Omni Tucson National as an amateur.
“It’s a very special tournament for me because it opened so many doors and created so many opportunities before I even turned professional and allowed me to go back to college and have a vehicle right onto professional golf when I got out,” Mickelson said.
Having already played in the Cologuard Classic, Tucson’s PGA Tour Champions event, Mickelson will complete his professional golf-playing hat trick this week when he tees off at the LIV Golf event at The Gallery Golf Club’s South Course for a three-day event Friday-Sunday. It’s the second tournament in the Saudi-funded LIV Golf’s second season.
“I really do enjoy the state of Arizona, but also Tucson has been a great place for me,” said Mickelson, a former Arizona State Sun Devil. “It’s where I won my first professional event in 1991 as an amateur, and I have fond memories of coming back here. To participate and bring LIV Golf to Tucson is exciting for me and everybody else involved with LIV.
“We’ve tried to nail down some markets that have always wanted and supported professional golf, and Tucson has supported professional golf. ... It’s an opportunity to be in a market that is a golf market, supportive of professional golf, and hasn’t had the highest level of golf in the world in a while, and bring that back to a community that deserves it.”
A scenic view of the 12th hole ahead of LIV Golf Tucson at the Gallery Golf Club on Monday, March 13, 2023.
Follow the money
The last time Mickelson played in a professional golf event in the Old Pueblo was in 2021, when he played in the pandemic-affected Cologuard Classic at Omni Tucson National. Days after Tiger Woods was severely injured in a car crash, a plethora of PGA Tour and Champions Tour golfers honored the golf icon by wearing a red polo and black pants — Woods’ signature look on Sundays — during their final rounds of the week. That included Mickelson, who doesn’t normally wear red but scrambled and found a red Arizona Wildcats polo with the Block A logo covered by his black pullover jacket. It was a moment for Mickelson to honor his longtime competitor.
Now? Mickelson and Woods are, well, it’s complicated. Woods and other high-profile PGA Tour golfers, such as Rory McIlroy, have voiced their displeasure with LIV and its attempt to rival golf’s premier league.
When LIV Golf — which pays its players noticeably more than the PGA Tour, with fewer tournaments — started holding events last summer, Woods, who was offered nearly $1 billion to move from the PGA Tour to LIV, said players making the jump “turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.”
LIV, whose CEO is former PGA Tour star Greg Norman, inked Mickelson to a $200 million contract — and that’s just to show up and play; it doesn’t include earnings at tournaments. Dustin Johnson, who was LIV’s individual champion in its inaugural season, was among the biggest names to sign with the league; his LIV contract is worth over $125 million. Again, that’s just the flat rate.
The controversy behind LIV isn’t the astronomical lumps of cash players are making, it’s where the money is coming from. In 2018, the Saudi government was linked to the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi for writing critical stories on the country’s human rights laws.
When LIV was in the infancy stages, Mickelson told golf writer Alan Shipnuck that the funders for LIV are “scary (expletives) to get involved with.”
“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.”
Leading up to last year’s Genesis Invitational, McIlroy dubbed Mickelson’s comments as “naïve, selfish, egotistical, ignorant.” Mickelson later apologized for his comments.
LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, left, walks off the course after the final round of the LIV Golf Team Championship at Trump National Doral Golf Club on Oct. 30, 2022. The LIV tour is scheduled to stop at the Gallery Golf Club in Marana March 17-19.
Augusta reunion
Initially, LIV signed PGA Tour members who weren’t among the top players anymore, whether it was a result of aging or a dip in play: Mickelson, Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson and Ian Poulter, whose journey to LIV is featured in Netflix docuseries “Full Swing.”
LIV wasn’t a threat to take away the PGA Tour’s top talent — until it wooed Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Aussie star Cameron Smith, who left the PGA Tour despite ranking in the top 10 globally. The addition of some of the PGA Tour’s younger stars “is massive,” according to Mickelson.
“It’s another thing that I think everybody is grateful for, because again, we were told LIV won’t ever get the top players,” he said. “And gosh, we have so many top players in the world that it’s a quality product, and it’s something that we are all grateful for.”
LIV golfers have been suspended by the PGA Tour but are allowed to compete in major championships, including the Masters in April.
“I’m happy to see it for the (PGA) Tour,” Mickelson said. “I think there will always be a need and a want for traditional golf. … We’re all grateful that we’re able to participate in the Masters and all the majors because there was a lot of talk that that might not happen. But here we are, able to do that, and we are all grateful for that as well.”
About that relationship with Woods: Mickelson, Johnson, Garcia, Watson, Charl Schwartzel and Patrick Reed — past green-jacket winners — will indulge in the Masters champions dinner. In a closed setting, Woods and his PGA Tour counterparts will mingle with several LIV golfers. Awkward much?
“I don’t know what that reaction’s going to be,” Woods said in February. “I know that some of our friendships have certainly taken a different path, but we’ll see when all that transpires.”
Mickelson said this week that he has “no expectations” for the Masters champions dinner.
“We are grateful to just be able to play and compete and be a part of it,” Mickelson said. “A lot of the people there that are playing and competing in the Masters are friends for decades, and I’m looking forward to seeing them again.”
Captain Phil Mickelson of HyFlyers GC speaks at a news conference ahead of the LIV Golf Tucson event at the Gallery Golf Club on Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
‘A lot happening’
What makes LIV — roman numeral for 54, the number of holes played — different from the PGA Tour? For starters, the first two rounds are shotgun starts, meaning players tee off simultaneously at different holes.
Second, in what’s typically an individual sport, LIV is a team-based league with 48 players spread across 12 teams: 4Aces, Cleeks, Crushers, Fireballs, HyFlyers, Iron Heads, Majesticks, RangeGoats, Ripper, Smash, Stinger and Torque. The individual winner will receive $4 million, and the winning team will divide $3 million amongst its members on top of their earnings from their position on the leaderboard.
“It has all happened so fast and everything got moved up a year because we had so much demand with so many top players coming over that we ended up moving the league and the team aspect up a year,” said Mickelson, the captain of the HyFlyers.
“So there’s a lot happening. There’s a lot of transition. There’s a lot of kind of figuring things out as we go. But to think that we are where we are today in less than a year, it’s beyond amazing.”
Outraged golfer films landscaping crew at The Gallery Golf Club at Dove Mountain.
Marana golf course under fire for removing saguaros ahead of LIV tourneyFor Star subscribers: Workers were filmed cutting down two mature saguaros at The Gallery Golf Club at Dove Mountain during preparations for the upcoming LIV Golf tournament. The state is investigating.
Re: the March 5 article "Marana golf course under fire for removing saguaros."
As a golfer and believer in human rights, I advocate boycotting the upcoming LIV golf tournament at The Gallery Golf Club in Marana (March 17-…
The LIV Golf Org.has been in my backyard for almost 2 months now. They have blocked my beautiful view with an obnoxious structure with LIV pla…
