Phil, obviously, miscalculated the degree to which his celebrity/fandom cache would protect him from blow-back. He's used to weathering a wedgie or maybe light kick-in-the-nuts response ... but this time the messenger has not only been shot, but also drawn-and-quartered, poisoned, and burnt at the stake. Maybe he should have looked at how Norman fell from "living legend" to pariah?
I would have to loved to see how this might have played out if the backers were not Saudi's (e.g. Musk, Bezos, or maybe Phil Knight) and the spokesperson was Tiger rather than Mickelson. Same message - just different players. If the PGA Tour actually did have real competition (European Tour prize money is half that of the PGA, even when it includes the four majors and World Golf Championships) the benefits to the players would be substantial. They forked over an additional 40 million of PIP money just on rumor/threat of the SGL ... how much more would be thrown into the pot if they actually had to entice players away from another league?
As much as the PGA tour decries "For the good of the game", their threat to ban players who opt to play in this new league, "us or them", does kind of smell like "for the good of their own interests". Is Phil posturing to become the Curt Flood of golf? It sure seems the parallels are there - given how a large segment of the national press and most fans could not understand how someone who made $90,000 playing baseball could be unhappy or view himself as a “slave.” (Flood’s claim on a nationally televised show that “a well-paid slave is, nonetheless, a slave” did not help his cause). I'm sure most current golfers would like to be the "Catfish Hunter" in that story ... but, also remember that Floyd lost all his court cases.
