Monahan, Jay W (1970- )

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      If Mickelson Bolts for Saudi-Backed Tour, Will Young Golfers Follow?

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      Mickelson, one of the game’s most popular players, has simultaneously spent nearly three decades vexing the sport’s leadership, while collecting nearly $100 million in earnings.It is hardly a surprise that Phil Mickelson is playing the provocateur in the growing drama over a proposed, breakaway Saudi Arabia-backed golf league that hopes to lure top professional golfers from the long-established PGA Tour. Mickelson, one of the game’s most popular players, has simultaneously spent nearly three decades vexing the sport’s leadership, whether it has been the august United States Golf Association or the PGA Tour, from whom Mickelson has collected nearly $100 million in career earnings.So Mickelson’s pedigree as a freethinking firebrand is well established. But even that reputation could not have forecast the striking comments attributed to him when discussing the proposed Super Golf League, whose main source of funding is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $400 billion.In an interview for an unauthorized biography to be released in May, Mickelson told journalist Alan Shipnuck, the book’s author, that he knew of the kingdom’s “horrible record on human rights,” but was willing to help the new league because it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to dramatically increase PGA Tour players’ income.In a story posted on “The Firepit Collective” golf website, Shipnuck quoted Mickelson as saying the Saudi authorities were “scary,” and used a profanity to describe them. He noted the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was assassinated in 2018 with the approval of the kingdom’s crown prince, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Mickelson also alluded to the criminalization of homosexuality in Saudi Arabia, where it is punishable by death.“We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights,” Mickelson was quoted as saying. “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.”Mickelson’s main target was Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, who he claimed would help players financially only if forced to do so. The upstart league, Mickelson said, gave the players new leverage. Earlier this month, in an interview with Golf Digest, Mickelson castigated the tour for its “obnoxious greed.”For Mickelson, who is 51 and a six-time major champion, his remarks will likely only further isolate him from the young golfers rising in the sport. For the most part, these new kingpins of golf have pledged their allegiance to the PGA Tour, which has vowed to suspend any player aligning with the alternative league., with lifetime expulsion from the PGA Tour also a possibility.Thursday at the Genesis Invitational, a tour event being played near Los Angeles, Justin Thomas, who is eighth in the men’s world golf rankings and active in helping set tour policies, was unsparing when discussing Mickelson.“Seems like a bit of a pretty, you know, egotistical statement,” Thomas said. Referring to Mickelson and any other players who want to defect from the tour, Thomas, 28, added: “If they’re that passionate, go ahead. I don’t think anybody’s stopping them.”While no tour golfer has committed to the upstart league, a few golfers, most of them over 45, have been noncommittal about it and offered mild praise for some elements proposed by the rival league, like fewer tournaments and appearance fees at events that are paid to top golfers regardless of how they perform on the golf course.But the split with the golfers born after 1985 could not be more conspicuous.Rory McIlroy, at the Genesis Invitational on Wednesday, said he is “so sick” of hearing about the Saudi-backed tour.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesRory McIlroy, a four-time major winner, called the proposed new golf circuit “the not so super league.” He added: “I’m so sick of it.”McIlroy, 32, also suggested that it was only older players past their prime looking for a hefty payday who are weighing an exit from the PGA Tour.“I can maybe make sense of it for the guys that are getting to the latter stages of their career, for sure,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s what a rival golf league is really. That’s not what they’re going to want, is it? They don’t want some sort of league that’s like a pre-Champions Tour.”The Champions Tour is a scaled-down, separate wing of tournaments within the PGA Tour umbrella that is open to golfers more than 50 years old.“You’ve got the top players in the world saying ‘no,’ so that has to tell you something,” McIlroy said.Jon Rahm, the top-ranked men’s golfer, was also dismissive of the proposed league.“I don’t do this for the money, which to me is the only appeal to go over there,” Rahm, 27, said. “They throw numbers at you and that’s supposed to impress people. I’m in this game for the love of golf and the love of the game and to become a champion.”Perhaps the hottest young star, Collin Morikawa, 25, shook his head when asked where he stands on the potential for a new league.“I’m all for the PGA Tour, my entire life I’ve thought about the PGA Tour,” Morikawa, who has won two major championships in the last two years, said. “I’ve never thought about anything else; it’s always been the PGA Tour.”Many other players have expressed support for the PGA Tour, most notably the golfer who served as the idol for nearly all the young players now rising to the top of tour leaderboards.“I’m supporting the PGA Tour,” Tiger Woods said emphatically late last year when asked about the proposed venture. “That’s where my legacy is.”When pressed, Woods looked almost annoyed and insisted he had no interest in listening to discussions about a rival league.Tiger Woods, at the 2020 Masters tournament, has spoken in strong support of the PGA Tour.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAdam Scott, who is 41 and the 2013 Masters champion, did not close the door to joining the Saudi-backed league when asked about it this week. In the last decade, Scott has significantly reduced his playing schedule and fallen to No. 46 in the men’s rankings. Lee Westwood, who is 48 and a 25-time winner on the European Tour, said earlier this month that he had signed a nondisclosure agreement and could not discuss the projected new league.But most pros on the PGA Tour do not seem to expect a major disruption of the status quo.Pat Perez, an outspoken tour journeyman, believes Woods’s voice — not surprisingly — carries the most weight. The modern tour, after all, was built on the back of Woods’s towering successes. Perhaps one could consider this another chapter in the longstanding Mickelson-Woods rivalry.“I think the way Tiger’s approaching it is phenomenal,” Perez, 45, said Thursday. “He understands where he made all his money. I think these young kids, they’re backing Tiger. What he says is pretty much gold.”Perez continued: “If you don’t have the top kids doing it, I just don’t know how much water it’s going to hold.” More

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      At the Tour Championship, Bryson DeChambeau Can Hear Himself Think

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      Sheriff’s deputies and security personnel shadowed the golfer during his first round to enforce a new PGA Tour ban on fans who heckle him. No one dared.ATLANTA — A Tour Championship crowd at East Lake Golf Club will never be confused with a gallery at the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, but on this particular Thursday, the scene could have been mistaken for a solitary stroll in a park.Two days after the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, issued a no-tolerance policy for the “disrespectful” outbursts that have haunted Bryson DeChambeau all summer, the crowds following the penultimate twosome around East Lake during the first round minded their manners. People were reluctant to shout out Bryson’s real name, much less a derisive “Brooksie!” — his rival on the PGA Tour is Brooks Koepka — especially with two DeKalb County sheriff’s deputies and three PGA Tour security officials shadowing him around the course.The peace and quiet did little to lift DeChambeau as he dropped a stroke to his playing partner, Jon Rahm, on each of the first four holes. But he rallied with three consecutive birdies and finished with a one-under-par 69, tied for third with Harris English and five shots behind the leader, Patrick Cantlay, and three behind Rahm.Over the summer, DeChambeau has become the most divisive player in golf. After tossing away a share of the lead with a back-nine 44 at the United States Open at Torrey Pines and shrugging it off as “bad luck,” his relationship with the news media began to sour. He angered his equipment sponsor, Cobra, with harsh criticism of his driver. He denied, despite video evidence, that he had repeatedly failed to shout “Fore!” on errant drives into galleries. And then he delivered a curious explanation for refusing to get vaccinated and missing the Olympics after testing positive for Covid-19.In response to the criticism, DeChambeau will talk only to news outlets that are PGA Tour partners. At the same time, the fallout from his long-running feud with Koepka has generated taunts of “Brooksie!” everywhere DeChambeau has gone, making life miserable for him between the ropes. The situation boiled over last week at the BMW Championship at Caves Valley, where DeChambeau reportedly confronted a heckler who had shouted, “Nice job, Brooksie!” at him after he lost a thrilling six-hole playoff to Cantlay.On Tuesday, DeChambeau spoke to the Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis and admitted that the “Brooksie!” heckles were “another variable that I have to take account for.”Like wind direction or the grain of the greens.Monahan doesn’t think it should be a variable, and on Tuesday, he announced a new fan behavior policy under which “disrespectful” shouts directed at players would not be tolerated and could result in fans’ being removed from the course.“The barometer that we are all using is the word ‘respect,’ and to me, when you hear ‘Brooksie’ yelled or you hear any expression yelled, the question is, is that respectful or disrespectful?” Monahan said. “That has been going on for an extended period of time. To me, at this point, it’s disrespectful, and that’s the kind of behavior that we’re not going to tolerate going forward.”Several tour players, including Rory McIlroy and Cantlay, defended DeChambeau.“I certainly feel some sympathy for him, because I certainly don’t think that you should be ostracized or criticized for being different — and I think we have all known from the start that Bryson is different and he is not going to conform to the way people want him to be,” McIlroy said. “He is his own person. He thinks his own thoughts, and everyone has a right to do that.”He added: “There are certainly things that he has done in the past that have brought some of this stuff on himself. I’m not saying that he’s completely blameless in this. But at the same time, I think he has been getting a pretty rough go of it of late, and it’s actually pretty sad to see, because he — deep down, I think — is a nice person, and all he wants to do is try to be the best golfer he can be. And it just seems like every week, something else happens, and I would say it’s pretty tough to be Bryson DeChambeau right now.”DeChambeau tried to downplay the impact of what some have labeled harassment on the course.“I can take heat — I’ve taken heat my whole entire life,” he told the Golf Channel. “And it’s because I’m a little different, and I understand that. And I appreciate that, too. No matter what, if you’re a little different — whether it’s Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or whoever it is — there’s always going to be heat, and I recognize that, and I respect that.”He added: “At the end of the day, people are going to say things they’re going to say because they have the right to do so. It’s been going on for months now. Everybody has their own limits, and everybody has their own tipping points and whatnot. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of realizing: ‘You know what? I’m going to let that fuel me in a positive way.’”McIlroy, the current chairman of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council, supports the commissioner’s crackdown on fan behavior.“There’s no room in golf for people to abuse someone on the golf course when all they’re trying to do is do their best and win a golf tournament and follow their dreams,” McIlroy said. “So there’s no place for that in our game. And that might sound a little stiff or snobby or whatever, but that’s golf, and we have traditions.”DeChambeau, left, and Jon Rahm walk up the fourth fairway at the Tour Championship.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock More