Phil Mickleson talks Bolingbrook Golf Club ahead of next month’s LIV Golf event

Phil Mickelson has never stepped foot on Bolingbrook Golf Club’s course, but was pleased to hear Wednesday that Arthur Hills was the course architect for the layout, which will host the LIV Golf Individual Championship in September.

“I played one of his courses at Palmetto Dunes [in South Carolina] for a college tournament,” Mickelson said of Hills, who died in 2021. “I think he’s a wonderful architect, has done some great stuff. I did not know he was the architect at Bolingbrook, but that, to me, is pretty exciting. I think he’s very credible as an architect and am excited to see what he’s come up with.”

Mickelson was on a conference call to tout the $25 million Sept. 13-15 tournament, awarded to municipally owned Bolingbrook in April after months of speculation. The previous two years, LIV’s Chicago-area stop was Rich Harvest Farms, an ultra-private course in Sugar Grove, with Cameron Smith and Bryson DeChambeau the winners.

“I think there’s a value to playing where the public can play, where we can have an interaction with the everyday fan on a course where they can play the next week and compare their games.”

—  Phil Mickelson, LIV Golf

“We’ve played venues in LIV that cover the gambit, from long and hard to short with a lot of character,” Mickelson said. “I think there’s a value to playing where the public can play, where we can have an interaction with the everyday fan on a course where they can play the next week and compare their games.”

Mickelson was paid a reported $200 million as the first notable player to jump from the PGA Tour to the Saudi-backed LIV Golf in 2022, starting the split that has roiled men’s professional golf.

At 54, Mickelson is on the tail end of his career. He has one top-10 finish this season, a sixth-place result in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in March. His only other LIV top 10 was an eighth at Rich Harvest in 2022.

“I’ve not played at the level I want to,” said Mickelson, noting some “flashes of brilliance” amid inconsistency, especially in his short game. “If I’m not able to play better, I’ll step aside and let somebody younger take over.

“For 30-plus years, I helped build the PGA Tour brand,” Mickelson said. “My focus now is building the Hy-Flyers team and culture. It’s changed to doing something different. I feel this is a better way to go to achieve the things I want to achieve in the game.”

Rich Harvest reportedly received a flat $1 million site fee each year, but Bolingbrook’s take will depend on how much LIV uses the facility. Bolingbrook mayor Mary Alexander-Basta would not put a dollar figure on it.

“Our clubhouse is out of play for the members from [Sept.] 8th to the 16th, taken over for the golf tournament,” Alexander-Basta said. “There are fees associated with taking over the golf club, A to Z. It’s really based on consumption on what is used. We don’t know what we don’t know.”

A LIV spokesman said tournament ticket sales were expected to exceed other LIV tournaments in the U.S., but gave no specifics. Alexander-Basta was also vague on ticket sales, noting only that Bolingbrook had arranged for remote parking and shuttle buses to the course.