Phil Mickelson’s taking the company stand on this one.
Philly Mick is out there in Napa, playing in the now-insignificant PGA Tour cross-over season opener at the Safeway Championship.
Phil’s there because his management company runs the event. It used to be Gaylord Sports Management, which was acquired by Lagardere. Mickelson had used his influence in the company, and he’s got a lot, to get himself paired with Tiger Woods.
This was supposed to be Woods’ grand return to golf. It was that way last Friday but by Monday, it wasn’t.
Mickelson is left as the sole headliner of the first event of the 2016-17 PGA Tour season.
These early events are for the chomping-at-the-bit Web.com guys, 50 of them, who earned their way onto the PGA Tour. The rest of the field is guys way down the money list, guys who don’t sell tickets, guys who fans wouldn’t get up early on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday morning to watch in person.
The declaration by Woods sent fans running over each other to buy tickets. More than 30,000 were sold. That’s crazy for a Safeway-type of event.
The tickets are no longer a hot item, not since Woods doused water on them. The story goes that one ticket buyer, frustrated, went into a local Walmart and left four tickets on the windshield of his car under the wiper blade. When he came back, he found that there were four more under the other wiper blade.
Okay, back to Phil.
Phil took the company line on the Woods withdrawal. “We all want Tiger to come back but we want him to come back when he’s ready. If he doesn’t feel like he’s ready then he should wait.” After a little more blathering about Woods, Mickelson concluded: “If he doesn’t feel like it’s right then he should wait. We support him.”
What Phil needs to understand is that Woods wasn’t ready to play with Mickelson, not now, not when Mickelson is in pretty darn good form and Eldrick will most likely struggle with the fact that his game is covered in rust.
No one consulted with Woods on the potential pairing and while Woods flew to California last week to begin preparing, what looked like a show on Friday turned into a no-show by Monday. So what difference did three days make? Probably a few chunked chips here and there with caddie Joe LaCava watching in horror. Probably a few really errant tee shots, whatever it was, it was enough to scare Woods into declaring his game to be “vulnerable.”
While Woods may be vulnerable, Mickelson’s feeling like a million bucks after those 10 birdies he made the final day of the Ryder Cup in his match with Sergio Garcia where he shot 63.
In fact, Mickelson is feeling so pumped that this week he declared this event to be the start of his run toward the 2018 Ryder Cup team — as a player!
“I plan on being on the team in France and absolutely one of my goals is to play in France because I’ve never been on a winning Ryder Cup team over in Europe. I ant to go win a Ryder Cup over there and I want to be part of that as a player.”
You go Lefty.
In the meantime, you better start that 2018 Ryder Cup push this week.
