Phil Mickelson has been one of the most vocal critics of the PGA Tour in recent years and one of the most vocal supporters of the LIV Golf product as well and he’s now had his say on what will happen to golf in a decade’s time.
Mickelson was one of the original big names to move over to LIV and he’s been there ever since, banging the drum about the need for change.
The American has nothing to prove in terms of golf. He’s won six majors and more tournaments than most can dream of winning.
Indeed, his experience counts for a lot and Mickelson has now given an in-depth answer on how he sees the game of golf developing.
Phil Mickelson makes golf prediction for when PGA and LIV merge
As we know, the PGA and LIV have been trying to thrash out a deal for some time. Talk of $1bn investment from the PIF seems to have gone quiet, though.
However, Phil Mickelson is confident and believes things will, in the end, work out for the best.
“I think that golf is going to be in a similar transition [to the music business], is my guess. We are three or four years in but it is going to take a little while for this partnership to work out. It has taken them a long time to come to an agreement and I think it will take years for this to play out. When all is said in done I think golf is going to be in a way better place. Golf was confined to the United States because of the control of the PGA Tour and it wasn’t being utilised globally and they didn’t have the resources and ability to make it global,” Mickelson told Joe Pompliano.
“Because LIV has come in and changed the model entirely by paying for the player’s schedule for 14 weeks. We have 30 free weeks, but 14 they control. Sponsors know what they are buying, TV know what they are buying and they have the ability to move us throughout the world. Now it’s a global sport, we can use tourism budgets, which we have been doing and start to promote the game on a more global scale.
When it’s all said and done, let’s say a 10 year process goes through, we will have professional golf all throughout the world. If you are a pro golfer you can live throughout the world, you don’t have to live in the United States like everybody did and has done for the last 50 years. So I think it is going to have a lot of growth opportunity because the US can only have so much growth.
“So you start to see now some great players coming from Asia and India and the top players in the world are coming from everywhere, and having professional golf be promoted and pushed and travelled throughout the world will continue that growth and promotion. So when all is said and done golf will entirely become a more global sport and more successful and have a big opportunity, but we are just in that transition stage.”
Phil Mickelson claims bigger golf events are coming
The American was giving quite a long-winded and detailed answer to this particular subject and as he carried on, Mickelson suggested that in time, we’ll see more tournaments hosting all the top players.
“It will start to include not just the majors, we will have big events throughout the world and have all the best players,” Mickelson continued.
“In the past model you would pay certain players, a couple of them, to go and play in other areas but you didn’t have all the best players. I think when it is all said and done the model will be where all the best players are playing way more often. When I played we didn’t have elevated events, we didn’t have tournaments where really most of the best players played against each other.
“We had the majors and the Players and that was it. We had some tournaments which had stronger fields than others but now we are talking about all the best players as a possibility. When I hear people say we want all the best players back together again. It hasn’t been that way. We haven’t had that, so now we can and it is just going to take a little time to get it ironed out.”
With golf effectively at a standstill but booming at the same time with YouTube content and the TGL also offering more ways to watch the game, it seems inevitable that LIV and the PGA will embrace at some point.
Quite what that looks like in reality, is anyone’s guess right now.
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