Mickelson: from Lefty to left out

By BRUCE LOWITT

Phil Mickelson, the defending (but not actually defending) champion of the PGA Championship, sneaked onto the Southern Hills Country Club for the first round Thursday before being arrested by Tulsa, Okla., police and charged with trespassing.

Mickelson is an outcast on the PGA Tour since accusing it of “obnoxious greed” and calling it “a dictatorship.” He is supporting the newborn rival Saudi Golf League, backed by the not-quite-democratic Saudi Arabian government.

He was discovered on Southern Hills’ sixth tee while handing Bubba Watson his Ping G425 LST driver.

“It was kind of obvious Mr. Mickelson didn’t belong on the course,” Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said. “He was wearing a thawb, kufiya and agai,” an ankle-length robe, headdress and rope holding it in place. “I mean, it ain’t freakin’ Halloween for another hundred-and-sixty-something days.”

After posting bail, Mickelson issued a brief statement saying Watson had hired him to be his caddie for the tournament “because I told him I knew so much about Southern Hills and also because I told him where I came from, which I guess was a little bit misleading on my part.“

“When he asked me about my outfit, I told him my name was Muhammad ibn Abdullah Khan al Saud and that I was from Baghdad. Y’know, like in the Middle East?”

Watson is from Bagdad, a town in the Florida Panhandle. “I think maybe he thought I was from the neighborhood,” Mickelson said.

“I was just trying to catch up with some of my buddies on the pro tour,” he added. “Funny, though. Every time I walked toward Tiger (Woods) or Rory (McIlroy) or Dustin (Johnson) or Bryson (DeChambeau), they walked faster in the opposite direction. I never caught up with any of them.”

Woods and Mickelson, bitter rivals early in their careers, have become close friends, exemplified by Woods’ comment when he learned Mickelson had been arrested.

“Phil who?”

Mickelson was widely and wildly celebrated a year ago when, at age 50, he captured the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island in South Carolina to become the oldest winner of a major tournament – his sixth – without using crutches or a walker.

But when he joined Australian Greg Norman, 20-time PGA Tour winner, in helping to create the Saudi-backed tour, even though he knew the Saudis were responsible for the death of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi and had a disgraceful record on human rights, Mickelson became a pariah.

“What I said was taken completely out of context,” he insisted. “What I said was that I’ve never had a camel for a caddie and I’ve put most of my money in Arab oil and a miniature golf course in Jeddah with a diamond-encrusted windmill and if I keep pushing this golf thing they’ll name a castle or a caliphate or something after me and maybe cover some of my gambling debts. Couldn’t hurt.”

Three months ago, Johnson and DeChambeau, who had been linked to the Saudi league, said they were instead supporting the PGA Tour because they’d been told the Arab courses were 95 percent sand traps and five percent fairways and greens.

In fact, two of the scheduled eight Saudi tour events will be at Doral in Miami and Bedminster in New Jersey, courses owned by former president and golf cheat Donald Trump.

“Oh,” Johnson said. “In that case, they’ll also be playing in swamps.”