Phil Mickelson's comments that LIV Golf is 'winning' don't hold water
If you follow the wide world of golf, you surely heard Phil Mickelson's comments last week about how LIV Golf is "trending upward" while the PGA Tour is on a downward trajectory. While this isn't the first time Mickelson and his cohorts who defected to the rogue league have thrown shade at the PGA Tour, his most recent comments do make us wonder: Is LIV Golf on a big uptick while the PGA free-falls?
Spoiler alert: It's not.
While LIV Golf defenders such as Mickelson and Dustin Johnson stand by their decisions to join the Saudi Arabia-funded league, LIV Golf continues to be on the outside of the golf world looking in. For starters, Greg Norman's fight to make LIV Golf part of the Official World Golf Ranking system remains fruitless as the powers that be denounce the breakaway league's format. Instead of aiming to make LIV Golf meet more criteria, Norman chose recently to fire back at shareholders.
“By degrading the strength of field by not allowing LIV players to get OWGR points, it’s not doing the game of golf any good,” Norman told WIO News in India. “Rise above it all. It’s good for the players, it’s good for the game of golf, it’s good for production, it’s good for corporations, it’s good for OEMs, it’s good for fans, it’s good for everybody. Just because you have a negative viewpoint and you’re one of the voting members of an independent organization... you hate LIV and you vote against it.
"Grow up."
Suffice to say, telling the people with all the power to "grow up" probably isn't going to make the process go any smoother.
Then there is the matter of TV programming, with LIV Golf having to pay Fox Sports to get its tournaments on television after the other major outlets declined, and the regular viewing public hasn't shown much interest in watching it.
This isn't to say that LIV Golf has been a complete failure in its inaugural season. It has tempted some of the best golfers in the world to join, after all, but as Defector's David Roth recently wrote, LIV Golf's habit of trash-talking other golf outfits and throwing money at all of its problems could very well be what causes the league to collapse inward on itself.
Mickelson might be having a grand ol' time playing on the LIV Golf circuit, making boatloads of cash and never having to worry about being cut from a competition, but as far as him on the "winning side," it is difficult to see how that argument holds any water.
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