Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy have found themselves on opposite sides of the PGA Tour’s ugly feud with LIV Golf, and there has certainly been no love lost between the pair in that time
Phil Mickelson once claimed that not a single LIV Golf team would want PGA Tour star Rory McIlroy, as the saga between the two circuits continues.
The PGA Tour and LIV have been locked in battle ever since the breakaway league’s inception in June 2022. Arguably the two most vocal stars on both sides have been LIV poster boy Mickelson, and PGA Tour loyalist McIlroy.
Four-time major champion McIlroy has made no secret of his ill-feeling towards the Saudi-backed series, and rival Mickelson, having infamously shouted down the camera ‘f*** you Phil!’ whilst appearing in Netflix’s PGA Tour docu-series ‘Full Swing’.
Earlier in the year, the Northern Irishman opened up some struggles he had been enduring with his golf swing, backing calls for an off-season across the PGA and DP World Tours for players to rest and recover. “We have all been advocating for an off-season and there’s certain reasons why guys want – it’s very hard to try to play your best golf when you’re really thinking about your golf swing,” he claimed at the Memorial Tournament in June.
“So that off-season time would be nice to work on your mechanics and your fundamentals so that you’ve got those sort of bedded in so that you can sort of roll going into the bulk of the season.” One circuit that does offer plenty of time off to its players is LIV.
The breakaway league hosts just 14 events across the year, alongside golf’s four major championships between April and July. On the back of McIlroy’s off-season comments in June, rival Mickelson admitted LIV could well be the perfect place for the former Open champion.
However, the HyFlyers skipper claimed there would not be a single team on the roster that would take him on. Taking to X in June, Mickelson brutally wrote: “As worn out as McIlroy was after the Masters and his need for an off season, LIV would be perfect for him.
“Problem is I don’t think there’s a team that wants him on it because they’d have to deal with all his bs.” Meanwhile, McIlroy will have been far from concerned about Mickelson’s comments, having later stated at the Genesis Scottish Open in July: “If LIV Golf was the last place to play golf on earth, I would retire.”
It appeared if he was to change his mind on the breakaway league, there would be a much simpler path onto the Saudi-backed circuit for McIlroy after PGA Tour announced plans to work with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), and ‘merge’ with their LIV rivals.
The Northern Irishman however reinstated his ‘hate’ for the tour led by Greg Norman, after news of the proposed ‘framework agreement’ was released ahead of the RBC Canadian Open in June. “I still hate LIV,” McIlroy claimed.
“I hope it goes away. And I would fully expect that it does. And I think that’s where the distinction here is. This is the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF. Very different from LIV.”
