Phil Mickelson has admitted his alliance with the rumoured Saudi-backed Super Golf League (SGL) is just a ruse to “leverage” the PGA Tour.
The 51-year-old appeared all in on the breakaway circuit, but in an excerpt from Alan Shipnuck’s upcoming book, titled ‘Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar’, the six-time major winner made it clear he thinks it's merely an attempt to “sportswash” Saudi Arabia's reputation.
“They’re scary motherf*****s to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. 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. They’ve been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse.
“As nice a guy as [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won’t do what’s right. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage. I’m not sure I even want [the SGL] to succeed, but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the [PGA] Tour.”
In his career to date, Mickelson has earned nearly $95 million on the PGA Tour in prize money alone and also benefited to the tune of $8m from the inaugural Player Impact Program - a new $40m initiative launched to reward those who drive the most engagement with fans and sponsors in light of the Saudi threat.
“The Tour is sitting on multiple billions of dollars worth of NFTs,” he added. “They are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of digital content we could be using for our social media feeds.
"The players need to own all of that. We played those shots, we created those moments, we should be the ones to profit. The tour doesn’t need that money.”
