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After a sparkling third round 79, sponsor invite Charley Hoffman met with media to clarify his various charges against the rules, governing bodies and PGA Tour. It’s quite a bizarre transcript.

While I realize we’re talking about someone who will never be confused as a former Oxford and Cambridge man, a few things become clear after reading Hoffman’s remarks. If you are paired with him, watch him like a hawk. And if this is the best the PGA Tour can do for its Policy Board when all bright hands are needed on deck, the future is not bright.

Q. Things often get sort of lost on social media, so I just wanted to ask what you really meant with the Instagram last night.

CHARLEY HOFFMAN: What I meant and what I said, I mean I think I explained it fairly well, but obviously not a huge fan of the USGA and how they govern us all the time.

“Govern us all the time.”

The Desert Sun’s Larry Bohannan considers the latest players v. brass showdown in golf. He highlights some of the differences between the last 1960’s battle the players had with the PGA of America that led to the breakaway PGA Tour and brings up a key point.

While the stakes and issues have changed—no TikTok and NFT’s back then—Bohannan notes that this time the leadership has listened and made adjustments with more money that comes in going out to players. While it’s debatable whether PIP’s and Comcast Biz Solutions Top 10’s do much to make the sport more fan friendly, they have satisfied some players into supporting the PGA Tour model.

However, something else may be driving player thinking (or greed?).

Mickelson’s point is that images of Mickelson, or any player playing in a tour event, are controlled by the PGA Tour. If you want to use a photo of a PGA Tour player for commercial purposes, well, the PGA Tour controls that image, not the player. So the tour has to be paid for use of the image.

That might seem normal, since other sports have similar regulations. But in a day when college athletes are making hundreds of thousands of dollars since the U.S. Supreme Court announced it is the athletes that control their name, image and likeness, should PGA Tour players have the right to control their NIL rights, or is that something the tour must control to operate successfully?

Golf.com’s James Colgan spoke to multiple PGA Tour executives who took issue with Phil Mickelson’s “obnoxious greed” remarks from that liberal democracy, Saudi Arabia. But at least he signed his name to his opinions even if they suggest he’s only about the money at this point.

A rebuttal was surely warranted given some obvious fibs and exaggerations by Mickelson. Yet not finding one Tour executive willingly going on the record highlights how much the organization is all bluff and no backbone.

Just like giving players waivers to play in Saudi Arabia with almost no meaningful strings, rebutting anonymously only says to the world: Phil was wrong but not wrong enough to sign our names to it.

Regarding the Global Home’s return volleys, Colgan writes:

In conversations with GOLF.com, PGA Tour executives painted a far different picture of the economics of golf’s largest professional tour, characterizing it as a highly successful, multi-billion-dollar business model built around its media-rights deals — and with constituents who’ve largely been content with that structure. (It should also be noted that the Tour operates as a federally registered non-profit, which means though it donates large sums to charity it also is sheltered from paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.)

Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger assessed Phil Mickelson’s attack of the PGA Tour and majors making money off the player backs and suggests Lefty’s never talked better but also may be going about this the wrong way. In making his point, Bamberger also inadvertently hinted at another potential problem Mickelson created for himself.

The fellas playing MLB, in the NFL and in the NBA, have an appealing level of individuality, but they are union workers playing team sports. They have, really, a completely different mentality.

If Mickelson really wants to affect change the most effective thing he could do is get 150 or so Tour players to stage a sit-down strike on the eve of, say, the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Then get that group to agree on media rights, purse distribution, governance structure and a million other things.

Good luck with that.

There has been some talk about Phil getting Tony Romo money to talk golf on TV. He’d be good at that, but it would bore him. It’s easier to imagine him as the commissioner of a golf league. Which one is hard to say just now.