Well, at least Phil Mickelson did not call Fred Couples a “scary m-----f-----”. But on social media on Tuesday night he did refer to one of America’s most beloved golfers as a “low-class jerk”.
And so, just as the elite end of professional male golf was declaring that peace and unification are on the way, so the left-hander who did so much to trigger golf’s civil war put his hand on the detonator once again.
Be sure that “Lefty” versus “Boom Boom” is a clash that will reverberate.
Couples, the evergreen 65-year-old whose rhythmic coolness has long made Stateside swoon, told a journalist on Monday that Brooks Koepka wants “to leave LIV”, the breakaway league that paid the five-time major winner roughly £100 million to jump ship less than three years ago.
“Brooks wants to come back,” Couples told Seattle’s KJR FM. “Brooks really wants to come back and play the [PGA] Tour.”
Cue mayhem on all the ranges. In Hong Kong, where LIV is playing its £20 million tournament this week. And, of course, in Orlando, where PGA Tour players are competing for their own £20 million purse in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Mickelson, in Fanling, quickly rose to the bait, despite him and Couples being close friends. “If it’s not true, he [Couples] has damaged a relationship which he cares about, then if it’s true he took away Brooks’s control of the timeline and narrative,” Mickelson posted on X. “Either way this is a low-class jerk move by Fred.”
These comments were, unwittingly or not, beautifully timed. With a tense stand-off in negotiations between the £700 billion Saudi Public Investment Fund – despite the recent intervention of that great peacekeeper Donald Trump – there remains great uncertainty of how the PGA Tour will amalgamate with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which bankrolls LIV Golf, the breakaway circuit, that has torn up the serene landscape of professional male’s golf.
Trump met with Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of PIF and of LIV, but the talks evidently did not yield an immediate solution or anything near a verdict. This row is merely the latest evidence.
When this saga began three years ago, Mickelson said to a journalist that the “Saudis were scary m-----f------ to deal with” and was credited as delaying LIV’s formation. This intervention could also be notable and it is surely significant that Mickelson’s crass post was later deleted.
