Phil Mickelson’s Still Hiding — But Maybe Not For Long

Come on, you know you miss him, don’t you?

Admit it, aren’t you the least bit worried that Phil Mickelson is being held hostage somewhere by a bunch of crazed Saudi henchmen?

No one’s seen hide or hair of The Crown Prince’s best pal in so long, we forget the last time we saw one of those phony “Thumbs Up” signs that Lefty basically swiped from Arnold Palmer.

Don’t look now, but Phil’s guy says he just might show up at Southern Hills then The Country Club, then St. Andrews.

Yes, you’re favorite Star In Exile — aka Phil Mickelson — is “officially registered” to play at the 2022 PGA just a short 23 days from now.

Tiger has The Great Stiney (aka agent Mark Steinberg), Lefty has “Phil’s Boy Loy” (aka agent Steve Loy).

Seems Phil’s Boy Loy has confirmed that Lefty has indeed “officially registered” to attend the second major of the season at Southern Hills.

But wait — there’s more.  We know Mickelson already filed his application for the U.S. Open so can a trip to St. Andrews be coming as well?  Well, sure.

But wait — that’s not all — and here’s where it gets even crazier.  After all his flirtations with the evil Saudis, Lefty had the nerve to ask for a release from the PGA Tour t head over to London on June 9 to play in that inaugural LIV Golf Invitational.  So knowing that Lefty has applied to the USGA for the 2022 U.S. Open, that means he’s going to be quite the busy bee — jetting all the way to London then a few days later, heading back across the pond to Brookline, Mass., to try and compete at The Country Club starting June 16.

But here’s where it gets even more interesting.  Phil’s Boy Loy backtracked and said his guy Lefty has yet to decide if he will indeed compete in any of the aforementioned events.  “Phil currently has no concrete plans on when and where he will play.  Any actions taken are in no way a reflection of a final decision made, but rather to keep all options open.”

Well, imagine that.

You may or may not have noticed that the PGA of America didn’t have one of those cool pre-PGA pressers where the defending champion shows up on site (Southern Hills) and talks about how great it was to win the year before and how exciting this 2022 version is going to be.

Nope, no Lefty in Tulsa.  At least not yet.

As for that first LIV event, somewhere Greg Norman is getting all giddy about having 15 players from the world’s top 100 supposedly showing up in London to compete for $20 million over just 54 holes.

It was so exciting to find out last week that Robert Garrigus wants to head over to London for that event.  By the way, Garrigus was No. 1,043 in the world when he arrived in New Orleans.  By the time he left on Friday after missing the cut, he fell 10 spots to 1,053.  Take notes please, Greg Norman.

Perhaps Garrigus put in a good word for Norman with Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey.  Yeah, old Two Gloves would be a great addition to the LIV opener.  Then there’s the 15 from the world’s top 100.  Well, two of them could be Kevin Na and Ian Poulter.  Na is No. 32 in the world, Poulter has fallen to No. 75 — which would certainly put them in Greg’s “Top 100.”

Which brings us back to Norman, who recently threw out the idea that the R&A should give him a special invite to the 150th Open Championship.

Perhaps we should all do what the R&A did and simply ignore Mr. Norman and his Saudi cohorts.

Sounds like a good plan.