Did Phil Mickelson win the PIP?
Or is this another of Lefty's FIGJAM schemes?
For those who aren’t aware, the PGA announced (or, rather, reporter Eamon Lynch broke the news) that they had created the Player Impact Program, which is awarded to the top-10 golfers on tour who engage the most with fans, using metrics that are laughably vague. It’s a very weird way to give more money to the most popular golfers on tour in lieu of paying appearance fees, something the tour has long been loathe to do. Whoever “wins” the PIP gets an $8,000,000 check with payouts to the other nine in decreasing amounts, all in all totalling $40MM.
It’s weird, and there’s been enough discussion about the idiocy of the program (and how it ignores truly interesting golfers like Max Homa who aren’t QUITE popular enough to make this cut) that I won’t go into it.
This week, Phil Mickelson “announced” on Twitter that he’d won the PIP for 2021:
So, a few things here - the PGA Tour has not announced this and have in fact stated that the PIP won’t be final until February 15, 2022. This, from GolfWeek:
However, a PGA Tour spokesman told Golfweek the year-long program runs through December 31 and a number of metrics have lag time in their reporting. As well, the results have to be verified by an independent auditor.
The PGA Tour, despite earlier saying it would not reveal the winners of the program, said the results will be released to its membership in mid-February.
Guys, I think I love this. Mickelson probably knows that he’s extremely high up on the list and doing this will actually probably seal the deal - because there’s an actual chance that he HASN’T won the PIP (nobody has, yet) but he knows that people will engage with this enough to make the difference.
Look, Mickelson is great and knows it - his nickname is FIGJAM which stands for Fuck I’m Great Just Ask Me - and him winning the PGA Championship this year is probably the best moment in golf for 2021 (with the other being the Ryder Cup). He played fairly terrible golf the entire year aside from this one week, but who cares? He’s also great on Twitter which shouldn’t be a surprise. Unlike some of the thirst trap golfers who started fake fights (hi Bryson! hi Brooks!) or suddenly showed up to give money to Korn Ferry tour players who just qualified for their first PGA event (a nice thing to do but I see you, JT), Phil just engaged with fans and did in essence exactly what the PIP is about.
But … I sort of hope that he just decided to announce himself as the winner as a ploy to make it so.
(And indeed, that might just be the case.)
