The 2022 Masters had a glaring omission with Phil Mickelson missing his first tournament at Augusta National since 1994.
A few months before, Mickelson took shots at the PGA as well as provided some tasteless comments about human rights violations in Saudi Arabia which certainly garnered some negative publicity toward him. This resulted in Lefty losing some notable sponsors, including Callaway, Workday, KPMG, and Heineken. He ultimately decided that it would do more harm than good for his public image to show up at the Masters.
It appears that Mickelson is now ready to return to the sport of golf as he officially applied to play in the first LIV Golf event series in London as well as the PGA Championship.
There it is—Phil Mickelson has applied to play in the first LIV Golf event series in London. He’s also signed up for the PGA Championship, where he’d be the defending champion. pic.twitter.com/G2lUNdLSCt
— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) April 25, 2022
While this appears like the first step for Mickelson to make his return to golf, his agent, Steve Loy said on his behalf that nothing is official quite yet when it comes to whether or not he will play just yet.
“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.”
This marks the third PGA Tour event that he has applied to play in, as he previously applied to play in the 2022 U.S Open. At the very least this likely means that Mickelson will be playing golf on the PGA Tour somewhere in the near future.
Mickelson has not competed in a PGA Tour event since the Farmers Insurance Open back in January. His last win was at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in November 2021.
