Top Golf Newsmakers of 2022: Phil's Career-Altering Year

Who He Is: LIV Golf member, World Golf Hall of Famer

SI Golf Rank: 2 (Bob Harig), 2 (Gabby Herzig), 5 (Alex Miceli), 3 (Jeff Ritter), 1 (John Schwarb)

Why He's Here: Success inside the ropes is what golfers strive for, while controversy outside the ropes is usually detrimental. In the case of Mickelson, that controversy was career-altering.

The lefthander always seemed to know more than everyone else; you could first trace it back to his continual criticism of the PGA Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan.

Mickelson’s belief that the Tour was keeping money from the players and hoarding it in some large safe deposit box, away from players, accountants and the PGA Tour board, seemingly has driven many of his decisions of late.

It was those concerns that had Mickelson reassess his relationship with the Tour and why he started to recruit players to join what at the time was an upstart group funded by Saudi Arabia, LIV Golf.

Mickelson was the pitchman and along with Greg Norman, the face of the new tour.

But Mickelson, like Norman, was not really accustomed to the limelight when discussing activities that were not purely golf, such as the Saudis' role in 9/11, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi or what has been called “sportswashing."

Their comments almost derailed the very entity they were trying to promote.

The death knell for Mickelson was his interview with a reporter that, when it eventually came out, was so damaging that it cost Mickelson all his sponsors except equipment company Callaway Golf, who put Mickelson in timeout for 2022 with 2023 still in question.

Since the launch of the new tour, Mickelson has become less and less the face of LIV Golf and instead has been shunned by much of the professional golf community.

Inside the ropes, the 52-year-old has had the same lack of success as he has had outside, winless and with a game that seems far from ready for prime time.

Mickelson missed the cut in the two majors he played in and was in exile for the other two, skipping the Masters and PGA Championship, where he was the defending champion.

Except for the reportedly large cash payment he received from LIV Golf to join, Mickelson’s 2022 was one to forget.

2023 Outlook: A win could wash the taste of 2022 out of Mickelson’s mouth, but with his 53rd birthday in June, it's hard to imagine the California native having the firepower to take on Cam Smith or Dustin Johnson in his second LIV Golf season.

It’s also likely Mickelson will make an appearance at all the four majors, as he is exempt for 2023, but again his game has not shown the ability to compete against the best in the world. The best Mickelson can hope for is to catch lighting in a bottle, as he did at Kiawah Island in 2021, and pray it’s enough.

The lefthander can also hope that his decision to jump to LIV Golf was the right one and he will once again be useful to the new circuit, but that is a wait-and-see as well.

What is certain is that Mickelson is getting older and his reputation has taken a hit that only Tiger Woods could recover from—and he’s no Tiger.