A 2019 run-in between Phil Mickelson and Tisha Alyn, the golf media personality and Alyn Golf CEO, has resurfaced, and it came at one of the roughest stretches of his career. Mickelson was mid-round at Royal Portrush, playing some of the worst golf of his life and staring down a missed cut, when he saw Alyn on the sidelines and walked over anyway. NUCLR Golf shared video of Alyn recounting the unexpected moment on X on September 8, 2026.

“I remember the first time Phil Mickelson walked up to me on the sidelines. I think it was 2018, the Open, or 2019, the Open,” she said.

The encounter came amid a rough stretch for Mickelson, who missed the cut after rounds of 76 and 74 for +8 at the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Amid a broader form slump with three consecutive missed cuts, the 2013 champion called his play “terrible” and expressed bewilderment at the downturn, exiting early from the major. Mickelson has since made the cut in each of his last two Open Championship starts, including a return to the same course in 2025.

But before the tournament, Mickelson and Alyn had already exchanged a few DMs, in which the 56-year-old had told Alyn how much he liked her work. However, the golf media personality didn’t believe that she was actually speaking to the 45-time PGA Tour winner. So, when she spotted him during the 2019 Open while covering the event, she came up with an idea to figure out whether it was really him. 

“I was waiting for him on the tee box, and I thought if it is him, he’ll say hi to me because I’m literally going to be in his eyeline,” she added. “If it’s not him, whatever, I’m messaging his team. Close enough, good enough. Sure enough, I happened to be recording, and he saw me. He was supposed to walk to the team. Instead, he beelined over to me. He gave me a hug, and he said, ‘It’s nice meeting you in real life. It’s nice meeting you in person. You’re crushing the internet.'”

The moment, Alyn said, was “just so surreal.”

For her, the encounter also captured a version of Mickelson that’s since been complicated by everything that followed.

“You know, this is before the LIV situation,” she added. “All PGA Tour players are superheroes. Phil’s a superhero.”

Two years later, Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship at 50, the oldest major winner ever. Then he jumped to LIV. That league is a mess now, and Mickelson’s name keeps coming up for the wrong reasons, same as it always has. He’d trashed the Saudi-backed tour before taking its money. Then remarks about who was funding it got him run out of the sport for most of 2022. He missed the Masters and couldn’t defend his PGA title. The LIV-PGA Tour fight has followed him since, and so has an insider-trading probe.

In 2026, Mickelson, who has played just one LIV event this year, in South Africa, faced accusations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior toward a woman at the Farms Golf Club. A Skratch investigation found that there’s a broader pattern of such behavior from Mickelson. However, the 56-year-old’s representatives have claimed that parts of the accusations are false.

It’s already cost him. Mickelson pulled out of the 2026 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale over the allegations, marking four majors he’s skipped this year. He’s never before missed every single major in one season.

But not everyone shares Alyn’s warmth. Nick Faldo recently ripped into Mickelson’s LIV efforts.

Nick Faldo rips into the favourite catchphrase from Phil Mickelson

Mickelson recently went to Hong Kong, where the LIV captain highlighted the league’s efforts to promote junior golf. But it has drawn a sharp response from Nick Faldo. The six-time major champion took aim at one of LIV Golf’s favorite talking points, questioning whether the circuit is genuinely “growing the game.”

“I get very frustrated when they throw out lines like growing the game of golf,” Faldo said on the Sky Sports Golf Podcast. 

He then pointed to his own decades-long work with junior golfers, taking a swipe at Mickelson’s one-off appearance.

“I thought, sunshine, I was here 20 years ago with a golfer called Rory McIlroy and a girl called Yani Tseng. I’ve got 240 nippers here in the next two days, because we had 4,000 at my Faldo Futures. My series is 30 years old. That is growing the game of golf, not just bowling up in Hong Kong once.”

With LIV Golf facing funding issues since Saudi Arabia’s PIF withdrew its funding, the futures of its players have been called into question. Faldo also questioned LIV’s future, claiming more players want out than in. He added that its guaranteed money and no-cut format mean “it’s not championship golf,” with little “fear of failure.”

That being said, it appears someone finally had something positive to say about Phil Mickelson at a time when he is under scrutiny.