Mickelson the villain adds spice to new LIV golf series

Open this photo in gallery:

To hear them tell it, the LIV Golf Series is all about innovation. This isn’t your dad’s golf (unless your dad doesn’t read the news – then it’s exactly his golf).

The first day of the inaugural tournament in the breakaway tour came out of the gates like a passel of ad execs loosed inside a shuttered pharmacy. There are a lot of ideas being thrown around here, and not all of them make much sense.

Do you like loud, excited talking? Because that’s one of them. Everyone at LIV Golf talks like they’re yelling at you from the other end of a train platform. If the Masters is golf with the volume on 2 and the Ryder Cup is an 8, then this is golf if they break off the volume knob.

Do you like screen-wipes, strobe effects and electro bagpipes? Maybe, if you’re hard of hearing and live in a Scottish nightclub.

But I’m not sure what golf really needed was to get edgier. If you’re into edgy, watching a bunch of middle-aged dads walk around a park for six hours on a Saturday probably wasn’t your thing to begin with.

Do you like Dennis Quaid (?) narrating in Batman voice – “The evolution of the game we love begins … today”?

Wasn’t Morgan Freeman available? These guys load so much money on people they’re breaking backs. Now they’re getting cheap?

Or how about LIV Golf’s most innovative new product of all – evil Phil Mickelson.

Old, PGA-Tour Phil Mickelson was a cherub of a man. He had one of those perma-smiles, mouth half open and expectant, like a human Golden retriever. Just adorable.

Evil Phil Mickelson is not adorable. He looks as though he’s either just come back from or is just heading out to dispose of a body. He’s got a new, evil-looking beard and a new, evil black-on-black-on-black wardrobe. His outfit carries only one prominent logo – a silhouette of himself – which is really evil.

As best we know, evil Phil is not actually evil. That would be a bit too on the nose. This evil Phil is more of a sporty Scaramanga.

The effect was nearly ruined on Day 1 when Mickelson was approached by a terrifyingly peppy on-course reporter before tee off.

Mickelson was trying very hard to look evil. Despite the fact that it was a grey day, he was wearing reflective shades.

“I’m really excited to watch you hit bombs …” the reporter squealed while Mickelson stared ahead blankly, “… maybe even see your calves this week. Ha ha!”

Everyone knows there are no rules in LIV Golf. What happens at LIV Golf stays at LIV Golf (mostly because so few people bothered showing up).

But it is not possible to be evil in shorts. So that’s out for Phil Mickelson. He’s a bad boy from the mean streets of some gated community in Florida and if you get in his way, he will not hesitate to call security.

They did just that when Mickeleson’s journalistic nemesis, Alan Shipnuck, showed up in England to cover the tournament. Shipnuck was the guy who published Mickelson’s unvarnished thoughts about getting into bed with the Saudi-backed tour. According to Shipnuck, that got him bum-rushed out of Mickelson’s first LIV presser by “a couple of neckless security dudes.”

Okay, credit where it’s due. If you’re going to turn the old-fashioned news conference into the new Thunderdome – ‘100 flabby hacks enter; only 99 leave’ – mark me under ‘will watch.’ I may even attend if the price is right. Call me with some round figures.

Add to this flutter all the new rules of LIV Golf – teams, drafts, no cuts, 54 holes instead of 72. That’s all fine in theory. Very innovative. But eventually you have to actually play golf.

Based on first impressions, what LIV Golf offers is indeed different than the PGA Tour. It’s not as good.

Golf as a televised spectacle survives on the basis of two things – history and quality.

The less history a golf tournament has, the less interest I have in watching it. Don’t call me during Masters weekend. I am busy. But the weekend after at whatever Citibank/Progressive/Speedy Auto Glass Open is scheduled, even if the exact same field is playing? Yeah, I’m free.

The PGA Tour doesn’t control the four major tournaments, but it exists in harmony with them. It’s not yet clear how LIV Golf fits into that ecosystem, but there has been a lot of talk on its broadcast about the “new era.”

Wonderful idea. But in order to upend history, you’re going to require some of your own. That’ll take years to earn. Until then, nobody will be drawn in by the pomp, regardless of how loudly it is yelled at them.

A lack of history forces you back onto the second thing – quality.

Golf is a sport of mistakes. There is fun to be had in watching someone make a terrific shot, but it’s more fun watching a really great golfer shank a ball into the parking lot.

That pleasure is predicated on the idea that the person you’re watching is the best at what they do. Nobody wants to watch mediocre golf played by people they don’t know at a tournament they’ve never seen before.

LIV Golf does have a few great golfers. It also has a few pretty good golfers. But most of its golfers are guys you’ve just barely heard of. In the same way that I am not interested in going to a concert featuring Keith Richards’s guitar tech, I’m not that stoked about watching Chase (brother of Brooks) Koepka play golf.

Subtract history and quality and what you’re left with is a promotional event for the Saudi regime. You know why the players are there pretending to be excited – money. They’re getting fantastically rich playing in this tournament without cuts that no one cares about.

But why are you watching them? Until LIV Golf has a convincing answer to that question, it will have to yell much louder to get people’s attention.