Phil Mickelson, never lacking in confidence, for better or worse, had trouble with the sentence.
He’s considering retiring, but it took him a while to find the words to say it.
“I’m 53 now,” Mickelson said, “and my career, you know, it’s — if I’m being truthful, it’s on — it’s — it’s — I’m a — it’s towards its end.”
The six-time major winner, now one of the faces of Saudi-backed LIV Golf, offered the revelation during an interview for an upcoming episode of Bloomberg TV’s “Latitude with Haslinda Amin.” On Thursday, Bloomberg shared a 47-second video of the interview, which you can watch here, and published a story co-written by Amin and Giles Turner, which you can read here.
This week, Mickelson is playing LIV’s event in Singapore, and in a media session on Thursday morning, he made no mention of retirement. Notably, the session was lighter — at one point, he was asked about being “the OG of golf viral videos,” which drew this response:
“No, I just say a lot of stupid s**t that goes viral.”
Later in the press conference, Mickelson was asked where he sees LIV in the next five to 10 years, and he was mostly vague.
“I think there’s a lot of things that are going to transpire over the next five or 10 years,” he said. “I’m very bullish and excited about what that means for LIV Golf.
“But there’s also a lot of uncertainty. I think the things that I do know is I think the quality of the players will continue to get better each year. I think that the ability and the sites that we move throughout the world will continue to excite players and excite fans. We’ll be going to more countries outside of the United States that really are starving for world-class professional golf, and we’ll have a lot more receptions like we had at Adelaide [where LIV played last week].
“With Singapore and the tourism department getting involved and loving the event that transpired last year and wanting us to come back, that seems to be the case right now where a lot of countries are negotiating and trying to get a LIV event there. So I see the global game of golf growing at an extremely high level.
“I think that’s exciting for everyone involved in the game because we are going to reach markets that we didn’t reach before. I think it’s going to inspire more golf courses, inspire more manufacturers selling clubs and equipment, but also inspiring young kids to try to play golf professionally. I just see that the game of golf is going to grow on a much more global basis because of the excitement and the presence that LIV Golf has.”
In the short video shared by Bloomberg, Mickelson did not say when he would retire. He followed his opening remark by saying he wanted to “help others to find the same enjoyment, fulfillment that the game of golf has provided me.”
