Should Phil Mickelson Join New Arab-backed Golf Tour? What about Dustin Johnson?

Just when we thought the big news was the formerly all-male golf club, Pine Valley, deciding to allow female members, the Saudi-backed, Super Golf League fired another shot across the bow of the PGA Tour in an effort to steal away players for their new venture.  It’s that group’s second effort to disrupt professional golf.

To recap, the Super Golf League ( SGL), formerly the Premier Golf League ( PGL), proposes to draw top players away from the PGA Tour and the European Tour to play in some kind of yet to be determined set of tournaments or matches, beginning with five of them in the fall of 2022.  They are supposedly offering between $30 million and $100 million to golfers like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Justin Rose and Phil Mickelson and possibly Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas.  Rumors abound.

While a lot of people like to think this is all about money, these days PGA Tour players make more than decent money, although not like baseball or football or basketball or soccer contracts.  It’s still more than enough to buy just about everything they want. In addition, their career span is much longer than those other sports.

Rory McIlroy has turned down the Super Golf League or Premier Golf League twice, publicly. But McIlroy just turned 32 this week. He’s in what has traditionally been called a golfer’s prime years. Importantly, here’s what McIlroy has already made on the PGA Tour: $54,910,517.  Another $30 or $50 million would be nice, of course, but it’s not what drives him.

“The game of golf, whether it’s a right thing or a wrong thing, is so about history and so about–we still talk about Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen and Ben Hogan and all those guys because that’s what this game is,” he said to media at Wells Fargo.

What about the majors and players who defect? The Masters has not spoken on this new venture, but for past champs, the “tradition” at Augusta National is that past champs are invited to play. And that includes Mickelson as well as Dustin Johnson and others who may be giving this new tour a look.

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Mickelson can play the PGA Championship as a past champ as well as the British Open.

U.S. Open winners are exempt for five years after their victories, but after a certain period of time, they have to qualify or be in a certain place on the world rankings or in FedEx points.  For someone who decides to give up membership on the PGA Tour, there are no FedEx points.

Then there’s the world ranking system, which is used for the majors and other events. Nobody really knows how those proposed new events would affect the world rankings because nobody knows how the heck they get calculated. Transparency has never been their thing.

So what all that means is that a player who goes to this new league is not necessarily blocked from playing majors, although he may be shut out of the PGA Tour and the European Tour with no road back.

But back to who might jump to the new league.

Dustin Johnson (age 36) and Justin Rose (age 40) are both in no man’s land age for golfers. They aren’t youngsters anymore, but they are both capable of winning many more tournaments. Vijay Singh proved what you can do after 40.

Johnson has two majors and may not be done winning them, and Rose has a U.S. Open title and Olympic Golf Medal. Johnson’s PGA Tour winnings total $71,428,457.  Rose’s number is $55,170,585.  Is just the money going to influence them? Well, they’d be idiots not to listen to a presentation on a new tour, but really, why kill the PGA Tour golden goose?

There are plenty of other players who are targets for the SPL.

Brooks Koepka started a little later ringing the cash register, but he already has four majors to his credit. He’s a year younger than McIlroy at 31, and if his body holds up, he can make more headlines and plenty of cash while winning titles that are important to him.  His dollar count on the PGA Tour is pretty substantial: $34,289,751.  However, he might be tempted to jump if he thinks his physical prognosis is not ideal or if his doctors have told him something about his physical health, long term.  You never really know what’s going on with players until they tell you, and most often they don’t.

Justin Thomas, at age 28, has won a PGA and a Players. He’s also come out against the idea of the SGL. His reasoning may be partly based on his bank account which already has $43,215,337 in career earnings. While Thomas’ name was mentioned in articles about the proposed league, he said at Wells Fargo in his press conference he has not been in contact them.

“I haven’t been told, so maybe I’m not of interest to them, I guess, which doesn’t really make a difference to me,” he said

No one has heard from Jordan Spieth on the SGL, but anybody with three majors in his back pocket, has to be on their recruiting list. Spieth, who is just 27-years-old, has nearly 15 good years left in his career.  During that time, he wants to win a PGA Championship and become one of a handful of golfers to win the career Grand Slam.  (Those who have done it are Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan and Gary Player.) The easiest way for Spieth to achieve the grand slam is to maintain his focus on golf in the U.S., particularly since the SGL may involve extensive world travel which takes its toll. He’s already been subject to mononucleosis from time to time, so a worldwide schedule may not be what he wants to do.  Spieth has already won a significant amount on the PGA Tour:  $44,971,466.

There are probably plenty of others who have been contacted, but those are the names that are thrown out most often.

But what about Phil Mickelson?

In an article on golfchannel.com, Mickelson said he had been contacted by the organizers of this new league.  However, he pointed out another aspect of the plan that most others have not even mentioned which was loss of control of their schedules.

Currently, Mickelson and all members of the PGA Tour can decide, within reason, where and when they want to play.  Mickelson has, in the past, not played tournaments that conflicted with activities of his children, no matter how important the event.  He skipped a U.S. Open to attend his daughter’s high school graduation.  To expect him to commit to a specific, world-wide schedule may be unrealistic. But at his age, does he want more money for some plan that has yet to be revealed?

He’s not short of cash. His PGA Tour winnings of $92,434,994 put him second behind Tiger Woods with $120,851,706.  And, of course, both earn more in other sponsorship deals.

There are some other aspects for Mickelson to chew on.  PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has indicated that any player making a jump will automatically lose PGA Tour membership.  You have to wonder if that affects a lifetime member like Mickelson or Johnson.  Can they just take lifetime status away? Maybe so.  It’s not been done before.

Then there are those who do not want to be associated with money coming from this SGL group because it is reportedly from Saudi Arabia. So, a decision could involve international politics.

However, at this time in his life, Mickelson may be the only one with really nothing to lose if he chooses to become a part of the SGL. Does he have some other goal?  Does he want to raise the money for some charity work? Could he have a humanitarian mission that we don’t know about?

And finally, while his psoriatic arthritis is managed, it’s a progressive disease.  The chances are that it will become more of a problem in the next ten years than it was in the last ten, just like osteoarthritis is in all humans.  Should he take some additional money and run?

Of all the PGA Tour players mentioned in articles about the SGL or it’s prior iteration, the PGL, Mickelson is the only golfer who might have a few good reasons to take a nice signing bonus and capitalize on the opportunity. It’s a big decision.

His money or his time or his health or a great unknown?  As the old commercials asked, “What will Phil do next?”

Going out on an imaginary limb, I predict he stays with the PGA Tour because it has already given him $92 million reasons to stay.