It sounds as if Phil Mickelson is having a great time in hiding.
At a time when much of the rest of the golf world converges in Tulsa, Okla., to compete at a PGA Championship, the 2021 winner is in California enjoying a now three-month absence from the game, according to his mother, spending time he rarely had before with family while sporting facial hair he hasn’t had before.
“I didn’t recognize him at first,’’ Mary Mickelson told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday, when play teed off from Southern Hills Country Club. “He had a little bit of a beard and mustache. I don’t ever remember him doing that before. Not too many people recognize him, so it’s been fun to be able to go out with him.’’
Mickelson has not played since making inflammatory comments in February concerning the LIV Golf Series, a Saudi golf league, in which he essentially shrugged off the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and told golf writer Alan Shipnuck that the money in the rival tour could help “reshape” the PGA Tour.
Mickelson emerged with an apology shortly afterward, but has not returned to the game even for a tournament he won last year at 50, becoming the oldest player to win a major.
The world has not seen him as he escapes in his Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., estate, but his mother and family have. His mother said he will leave the mansion to watch his nephew play Little League baseball or his niece play lacrosse, and the facial hair has been a nice disguise.
“I wish you could see him now,’’ the Mickelson matriarch said. “He’s relaxed, he laughs all the time. He’s not on the phone with people that are calling him for this and that, and please play in this tournament, and it’s hard when you have to say no, when you don’t have the time to spend. But he has taken a lot of time with our family.
“Tim and Tina, his brother and sister, have mentioned that too. How happy he seems. How relaxed and comfortable. And if it means going through all of this … I’m happy for him.
Mary told the outlet that the world will see “a different person if” he returns to play.
If?
“We don’t talk about [golf] very much,’’ she said. “I know when he comes to visit, we’re always in the backyard putting and chipping and just playing around. I guess he’s getting out there. I really don’t know for sure.”