Golf Writer Removed From LIV Press Conference By Security Puts Greg Norman On Blast For Lying About The Incident

• Well-known golf writer Alan Shipnuck had a run-in with security at LIV Golf’s first event.
• Shipnuck was the first to detail Phil Mickelson’s ties to the Saudi-backed breakaway league.
• Be sure to check out more golf stories at BroBible here.

On Thursday, Phil Mickelson played his first competitive round of golf since February in the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series event. One would think Lefty making his long-awaited return to golf on the controversial Saudi-backed circuit would be the golf story of the day.

Well, not exactly. Mickelson is involved in the most intriguing golf headline of LIV’s launch day, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the golf he played. Instead, it has to do with a journalist being tossed from his press conference.

Alan Shipnuck is one of the most well-known writers, journalists, and authors in the golf space. He is also the one that revealed Mickelson’s comments about the Saudis being “scary motherf–kers” while calling the PGA Tour “a dictatorship” in mid-February.

Shipnuck was on-site with a media credential for the LIV Golf event on Thursday, but that apparently didn’t get him access to Mickelson’s press conference.

Not long after the first round wrapped up, Shipnuck tweeted that he was “physically removed” from Mickelson’s presser by “a couple of neckless security dudes.” The security guards apparently said they were acting on orders from their boss.

Which boss that is, nobody exactly knows.

Shipnuck explained that Mickelson had just begun speaking before security took him out of the press area.

‘Freedom of the press’ doesn’t appear to apply at the golf tournaments being run and funded by the Saudis. At least not for the press that paints them in a bad light, which Shipnuck isn’t the only one taking that stand against LIV Golf.

UPDATE: Shipnuck sent Greg Norman, the CEO and brain behind LIV Golf, a text about the incident and caught him in a lie.