ORLANDO – Two Sundays ago after his final round in the Genesis Invitational north of Los Angeles, Rory McIlroy said Phil Mickelson’s alarming comments concerning the PGA Tour and the proposed breakaway, Saudi Arabia-backed golf league were “naïve, selfish, egotistical, ignorant.”
On Wednesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, McIlroy said Mickelson, who is immersed in controversy and has lost sponsors and stepped away from the game, should be forgiven.
“I think Phil has been a wonderful ambassador for the game of golf, still is a wonderful ambassador for the game of golf,” McIlroy said. “It’s unfortunate that a few comments that he thought he was making in confidence or off the record got out there. This whole situation is unfortunate.
“Look, Phil will be back. I think the players want to see him back. He’s done such a wonderful job for the game of golf, and he’s represented the game of golf very, very well for the entirety of his career.”
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In November, Mickelson told longtime golf writer Alan Shipnuck, author of an upcoming, unauthorized biography of Mickelson, that he could overlook atrocities committed by the repressive Saudi Arabia regime and use the outrageous amounts of Saudi money being offered as leverage against the PGA Tour to improve its financial output to players. He also likened the PGA Tour to a “dictatorship.”
Earlier this year, Mickelson told Golf Digest that the PGA Tour’s “greed” was “beyond obnoxious.”
Mickelson issued an apology on social media. KPMG, Heineken/Amstel Light, and Workday have ended their sponsorship with Mickelson. Long-time sponsor Callaway said the company is going to “pause” its relationship with Mickelson.
“Look, we all make mistakes,” McIlroy said. “We all say things we want to take back. No one is different in that regard. But we should be allowed to make mistakes, and we should be allowed to ask for forgiveness and for people to forgive us and move on. Hopefully, he comes back at some stage, and he will, and people will welcome him back and be glad that he is back.”
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McIlroy isn’t going anywhere. The world No. 5 has long said he wouldn’t go to the rival league and his allegiance is to the PGA Tour’s flag. This week, McIlroy is at one of his favorite places – Bay Hill. In his last five starts in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he has never been worse than a tie for 10th and won in 2018.
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland holds the trophy after his two-shot victory during the final round at the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented By MasterCard at Bay Hill Club and Lodge on March 18, 2018, in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
“We all know what Arnold Palmer means to the PGA Tour and to the game of golf in general. So it’s always nice to be here and try to sort of remember his legacy and remember what he meant to everyone,” McIlroy said. “It’s one of these courses that I don’t feel like I have to do anything special to compete. I can play within myself. You take care of the par-5s here. You play conservatively the rest of the way, especially how the golf course here has been set up the past few years. You play for your pars, and then you try to pick off birdies on the par-5s and some of the easier holes. If you just keep doing that day after day, you’re going to find yourself around the top of the leaderboard.
“It’s been a course that’s fit my eye from the first time I played here.”
He might think differently after this week.
“It’s a different course setup this year,” he said. “The rough is thick off the fairways, but then what they’ve done is they’ve taken out a lot of these runoff areas off the greens where historically it’s been you’d miss a green and run off and you’d still have the chip off short grass. Now that’s all been filled in with rough.”
But McIlroy still has his eye on the hardware – and the red cardigan sweater given to the winner. McIlroy’s is hanging in his closet.
Rory McIlroy celebrates with the championship trophy after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Sunday, March 18, 2018 at Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Fla. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images)
“I have not broken it out since then,” he said. “It’s a little scratchy. It wouldn’t be that comfortable on the skin, but it’s obviously very, very nice to have in the wardrobe.
“I think it’s one of the coolest trophies that we have in golf. I wish Arnold would have been around with me on the 18th green then. That would have been the icing on the cake. But I got to spend a couple of years with him here in 2015 and 2016, and I’ll always appreciate those times that we did spend together.”
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