Phil Mickelson was accused of “pure gaslighting” during his press conference before LIV Golf Jeddah where he came out swinging against the PGA Tour claiming he is now on “the winning side”.
Mickelson, 52, took center stage at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club on Thursday. It was the first time he had been in Saudi Arabia after memorably calling his bosses “scary mother******” earlier in the year when he conceded LIV, for him, was really all a ruse and he just wanted to force the PGA Tour into making sweeping changes.
Understandably, the first (and dare we say it) very brave question to Lefty was whether or not Mickelson had now changed his mind.
Related: Dustin Johnson makes complete hash of this hole in Jeddah
Mickelson batted away the question claiming the comments that forced him to step out of the limelight were never part of an interview with the golf journalist Alan Shipnuck.
“So I will reiterate, I never did an interview with Alan Shipnuck,” Mickelson told the media after showing off a hilarious henna tattoo of his own logo.
“And I find that my experience with everybody associated with LIV Golf has been nothing but incredibly positive and I have the utmost respect for everybody that I’ve been involved with.”
Of course, Shipnuck disputes this. He maintains his conversation with Mickelson was on record and claims the six-time major winner is telling porkies about this.
They discussed Mickelson’s comments immediately after he spoke on Golf Channel and Eamon Lynch, who ripped Sergio Garcia to shreds earlier in the week, went to town on Mickelson.
Lynch accused Mickelson of “pure gaslighting” and said Lefty was “a narcissist who is trying to reconcile himself to his gilded irrelevance”.
“I watched the video of the press conference earlier and it really did look like that’s what selling your soul looks like out there,” Lynch said.
“It’s a narcissist who is trying to reconcile himself to his gilded irrelevance in this game, because, Phil essentially turned it into an argument over nomenclature whether or not he gave an interview to Alan Shipnuck in which he harshly criticized – accurately – the Saudi Arabian government earlier this year.
“Now he says I didn’t give an interview. And that’s where a lot of the focus of this has been on. That’s pure gaslighting from Phil because it’s not disputed what he said. He apologized for what he said, therefore, acknowledging that he said it.
WATCH:
“He threw it all away for a stack of cash. That makes my skin crawl if I’m being honest.”@damonhackGC & @eamonlynch react to the latest comments from Phil Mickelson, who believes he’s on “the winning side” of the professional game. pic.twitter.com/DCv7dHm9x3
— Golf Today (@GCGolfToday) October 13, 2022
“The only people that he actually apologized to were the only people he told the truth about actually at the time which was the Saudis. But it’s a diversion tactic in a way because he’s standing in Jeddah in front of people who have essentially wasted more than a billion dollars so far on this enterprise and they don’t want to be told that it’s struggling to gain traction.
“So he’s creating this alternate reality in which LIV is thriving in which the audience is clamoring for the product in which TV executives are hurdling furniture to try to offer them deals. None of which is actually true.
Related: Nine players who changed their mind about LIV Golf
“It really is creating an alternate reality out there and you’ve seen it now. There’s just an air of desperation about the LIV guys around the idea of the Official World Golf Rankings and trying to create this momentum that the product itself doesn’t appear to be getting.
“The stench of that desperation is rising fast.”
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