Phil Mickelson was looking for a rematch.
Brooks Koepka decided to pass.
LIV Golf arrived Wednesday at Trump National Doral to kick off the week with a team selection news conference that turned into a roast.
The format has the top four teams (Aces, Crushers, Fireballs, Stinger) receiving byes into Saturday’s second round. Seeds 5 through 12 will play Friday, with 5-7 selecting their opponents.
Koepka captains No. 5 seed Smash. Before the Jupiter resident announced his first-round opponent, Mickelson, captain of the eighth-seeded Hy Flyers, was hoping to relive his 2021 PGA Championship title and final-round showdown with Koepka.
From the Palm Beach Post: Donald Trump to play in pro-am on Thursday before LIV Golf event at Doral
“If you want a rematch of the ’21 PGA, you could pick our team and we could play each other,” Mickelson said.
Instead, Koepka chose to face the lowest-seeded team, Niblicks, and face Harold Varner III in match play.
He did accept Mickelson’s challenge for later. But he will not come empty-handed.
“If you want to play, we can play,” Koepka said before adding. “You probably don’t know this because you’ve never been No. 1 in the world … when you finish (No. 1 ) at the end of the year they give you a little trophy. I’ve got two of those, so I could bring one of them to show you.”
Mickelson quickly countered.
“That’s a beautiful green shirt, do you have a green jacket?” knowing the Masters is not among the four majors won by Koepka.
And so it continued. LIV Golf, financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, will conclude a controversial yet successful inaugural season that has polarized the sport and forced major changes on the PGA Tour to prevent more players from defecting.
Detractors say LIV is a form of “sportswashing,” Saudi Arabia attempting to distract from its atrocious human rights violations. Supporters are in lockstep with CEO Greg Norman of Palm Beach Gardens and LIV ally Donald Trump, the former president and Palm Beach resident who has hosted two of the eight events this year and will be playing in Thursday’s pro-am.
“If I’m just looking at LIV Golf and where we are today to where we were six, seven months ago and people are saying this is dead in the water …,” Mickelson said. “Here we are today, a force in the game that’s not going away, that has players of this caliber moving professional golf throughout the world. It’s pretty remarkable how far…
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