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As the Open Championship rolls on in Northern Ireland, the PGA Tour holds an alternate-field event, the Barracuda Championship, in Northern California. The Tour invited YouTube golfing sensation Grant Horvat to play in the Barracuda, but he declined. Horvat said the Tour would not let him film his round for YouTube. Phil Mickelson, a former guest of Horvat, was asked about it at the Open Championship.
Phil was asked about the Horvat-Barracuda situation. pic.twitter.com/9qjkqMZS5K
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS) July 17, 2025
“I've really enjoyed playing my matches with Grant,” Mickelson said, per Normal Sport's Kyle Porter. “He's the nicest guy, and he's been very helpful for me to kind of get into the YouTube space, a space that I don't really know a lot about. I'm starting to learn – I'm learning from him. I'm learning from Bryson [DeChambeau]. They've been both very, very helpful.”
Mickelson then shot down a second chance to comment, “I'm not going to go into the weeds on that. I just really like [Horvat].”
Mickelson has been a guest on Horvat's channel, and they were partners in the LIV Duels video. But given a chance to bash his former tour, the six-time major champion did not take the bait.
Phil Mickelson skirts controversial Open Championship venue question
At the same press conference, Mickelson was asked about Muirfield hosting an Open Championship. The club where Mickelson won his Open in 2013 has not hosted one since. Shortly after that tournament, the club voted to uphold its men-only policy. Despite a 2017 vote to admit women as members, The Open has not returned.
“I don't know. I don't really get into politics on that. There's some things I get in politics on, but not that,” Mickelson said.
One look at Mickelson's X account shows he gets political quite often. Recent posts about Chicago Public Schools and Jeffrey Epstein outnumber golf-related posts significantly. But a comment about golf? Over the line, apparently.
Mark Darbon is in his first year as CEO of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which hosts The Open. He spoke at a press conference about returning to Turnberry, for different reasons, Muirfield, per Evin Priest of Golf Digest
“There's some things that we need to evolve at Muirfield—the practice ground, in particular, is a challenge for us to host the modern Open, and this is work we need to do. And if they need to facilitate some of the infrastructure that we require decent cabling to enable the scale of the production that we have these days.”
