SAN DIEGO — The spiciest of the mud-slinging, back-stabbing, greed-soaked reality shows hits overdrive this week. It's not the Real Housewives of Poway. Forget the 177th season of "Survivor."

It's golf, the supposedly refined, civilized and well-mannered game.

When the PGA Championship tees off at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday, it's not just Rory McIlroy against Brooks Koepka. It's the PGA Tour against LIV Golf. In the minds of many, it's the club-swinging version of good versus evil.

Right in the middle of it is San Diegan Phil Mickelson, who used the 2021 PGA Championship to pen one of the greatest feel-good stories since Old Tom Morris began chasing a ball around St Andrews.

It was thrilling to walk alongside Mickelson, at 50, as he redefined what's possible by becoming the oldest player to win a major at blustery Kiawah Island.

When hundreds streamed past the ropes on 18 and Mickelson and Koepka wiggled through the masses like the ghost players who suddenly appeared from the cornfield in "Field of Dreams," he was beloved for turning back the clock.

A year later, Mickelson enraged and disappointed many of those same people by leaving the Tour for the shadowy Saudi-backed LIV Golf and the disturbing human rights record that came along for the ride.

The sense of it: Mickelson was delivering a blow to a tour that had provided him a platform and riches for three decades, while offering more legitimacy to the invading horde that could threaten the sport.

Mickelson claimed he was hunting for leverage over the rigid limitations of the Tour, which eventually forced the front offices to share more of the money pie with the people making it possible. That's not a bad thing, but it also has pumped mountainous uncertainty into the game.

In one moment, megastar Jon Rahm was defending the traditions and history of the Tour. Then, after succumbing to a blizzard of bucks, he feigned amnesia and changed teams.

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