Both former winners of the Masters, Phil Mickelson (photo) and Bubba Watson, exiled on LIV Golf, could “retire” in 2025, at the end of their contract with the Tour financed by the Public Investment Fund ( PIF) from Saudi Arabia.

Is this the beginning of the end for two great champions whose common point is to have won the most prestigious Grand Slam tournament, the Augusta Masters? Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson, 53 and 45 years old respectively, could in fact “hang it up” at the end of their contract with LIV Golf which ends in 2025… Lefty, who was one of the first – with Dustin Johnson – to join in 2022 when it was created the LIV directed by Greg Norman and financially supported by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, did not succeed only two top 10s in the 20 tournaments he has played since.

Bubba Watson, who has the same contract as Mickelson (four years), is also in a negative spiral. Only one top 10 since his arrival on the LIV for the golfer from Bagdad (Florida). “I told my team that if they don’t think I’m good enough to play, they can put a better golfer in my place,” he stressed.

Before bowing out, Phil Mickelson, however, declared to our colleagues at Golf Digest that he still wanted to win the US Open. “I will have achieved the Grand Slam in my career and I will have nothing more to prove!

» The left-hander from San Diego will turn 54 on June. He is one of 13 players in the history of golf to have won at least 3 of the 4 majors and also placed second in the US Open Championship six times without ever managing to win this tournament.

With his victory in his second PGA Championship on May 23, 2021, he became, at 50 years, 11 months and 8 days, the oldest player to win one of the four major tournaments. The exceptional performance on the Kiawah Island course – where he beat his compatriot Brooks Koepka and the South African Louis Oosthuizen, twenty years younger after a thrilling three-way duel – came eight years after the last major he won in 2013. Mickelson, who had gradually slipped beyond the hundredth position in the world ranking, suddenly rose to number 32.