The spiciest of the mud-slinging, back-stabbing, greed-soaked reality shows hits overdrive this week. It’s not the Real Housewives of Poway. Forget the 177th season of “Survivor.”
It’s golf, the supposedly refined, civilized and well-mannered game.
When the PGA Championship tees off at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday, it’s not just Rory McIlroy against Brooks Koepka. It’s the PGA Tour against LIV Golf. In the minds of many, it’s the club-swinging version of good versus evil.
Right in the middle of it is San Diegan Phil Mickelson, who used the 2021 PGA Championship to pen one of the greatest feel-good stories since Old Tom Morris began chasing a ball around St. Andrews.
It was thrilling to walk alongside Mickelson, at 50, as he redefined what’s possible by becoming the oldest player to win a major at blustery Kiawah Island.
When hundreds streamed past the ropes on 18 and Mickelson and Koepka wiggled through the masses like the ghost players who suddenly appeared from the cornfield in “Field of Dreams,” he was beloved for turning back the clock.
Louis Oosthuizen and Phil Mickelson fist bump on the first tee during the third round of the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.
(Getty Images)
A year later, Mickelson enraged and disappointed many of those same people by leaving the Tour for the shadowy Saudi-backed LIV Golf and the disturbing human rights record that came along for the ride.
The sense of it: Mickelson was delivering a blow to a tour that had provided him a platform and riches for three decades, while offering more legitimacy to the invading horde that could threaten the sport.
Mickelson claimed he was hunting for leverage over the rigid limitations of the Tour, which eventually forced the front offices to share more of the money pie with the people making it possible. That’s not a bad thing, but it also has pumped mountainous uncertainty into the game.
Phil Mickelson celebrates with brother and caddie Tim Mickelson after winning the 2021 PGA Championship in Kiawah Island, S.C.
(Getty Images)
In one moment, megastar Jon Rahm was defending the traditions and history of the Tour. Then, after succumbing to a blizzard of bucks, he feigned amnesia and changed teams.
McIlroy, who became the staunchest defender of all things PGA, got blindsided by the Tour’s awkward handshake with LIV that still is being sorted out.
Anger. Bitterness. Avarice. Hypocritical pivots.
Reality show stuff, indeed.
Fast forward to 2024. Mickelson is back and will be at the same PGA Championship as Tour-backing legend Tiger Woods for the first time since golf was tossed into a blender.
Koepka, another LIV check casher, is the defending champion. McIlroy, betrayed by his own tour, tees off as a big-time threat. Scottie Scheffler is the best player in the world and the Tour’s most convincing and visible example of still being the best collection of golfers on the planet.
Each of the majors moving forward, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and, this week, the PGA Championship becomes validation for one side or the other.
Good versus evil.
Pop the popcorn.
“It’s hard for me to not sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb and feeling like I’ve put myself out there and this is what happens,” McIlroy said in June 2023 after news the groups would partner in some ways moving forward.
The saltiness needed to come with a sodium warning: “I still hate LIV,” McIlroy said. “Like, I hate LIV. I hope it goes away.”
There’s also an inescapable truth that LIV has too much money to go away easily or without a fight that could further damage the Tour. The group also senses traction, especially after luring a player with the résumé of Rahm.
Backlash is coming for Rahm after his comments at Valhalla on Tuesday.
“You guys keep saying ‘the other side,’” Rahm told the assembled media. “But I’m still a PGA Tour member, whether suspended or not. I still want to support the PGA Tour, and I think that’s an important distinction to make.”
Support it? By leaving for a rival group?
Sports thrives on fiery rivalries, but when the Yankees and Red Sox face off, there is not a chance one organization will crumble in the process.
Golf remains on an uncharted path in many of the same ways major-college sports have been upended by NIL money and transfer-portal chaos. We’re seeing sports being reinvented and repositioned in seismic ways.
At the PGA Championship, much of the talk will revolve around the individual names and stories as always. It also will be about which side of the Tour and LIV fence contenders stand.
The ripples from the evolution of a game with such historic roots are in no way close to slowing. Where can LIV players play? Where can’t they play? What does it mean to individual events like the Farmers Insurance Open?
Scabs get picked at every turn, at champions dinners where the polarized sides share cocktails and Caesar salads while muttering under their breath and at the tee boxes of majors like the PGA Championship.
It’s a pitched battle for wins and public perception.
To watch it play out has been a particular head-turner in San Diego because Mickelson has been so central in it. Toss in the city being an adopted hometown for Rahm and the plot thickens.
So, the PGA Championship becomes the latest proving ground. The Tour has results and history on its side. LIV has young-upstart momentum and untold wealth to ride out the choppy waves.
It’s still unclear where golf goes from here.
But it’s sure interesting to watch.
