Phil Mickelson, paired at Royal Portrush with the West Australian NZ Open champion and fellow lefthander Ryan Peake for the first 36 holes at The Open, has been known to both hit "bombs" and set a few proverbial ones off inside the golf world.

On twitter (X) earlier in the week he posted the following: “Here’s a random Monday morning ‘hypothetical’ question. What if LIV went to a 35-event, full 120-person field, dual shotgun start (morning and afternoon) and the current LIV events were ‘elevated’ events within the schedule. Where would those additional players come from and what would happen to the PGA Tour then?”

It’s long been my contention LIV would have looked a lot different if Peter Thomson had been one of its primary influencers and not Greg Norman.

What Mickelson is suggesting is close to – if not exactly – what Thomson would likely have proposed because he well understood there were never going to be enough jobs in the United States for all the young men seeking to play the game for a living.

In the 1960s, he and Gary Player were the finest non-American players, and both unstintingly promoted the game outside of what, in 1968, became the PGA Tour. Player less so probably as Thomson was instrumental in the formation of the Asian Tour and the best player in the field anytime, he played in Japan, in Britain, on the Continent or in New Zealand.

Only at home in the era when we routinely saw Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer come to Australia was he not the man to beat.

His son, Andrew, weighed in with the best-informed view of what his dad might have made of it all.

“Beyond doubt, the LIV format would have puzzled him and disappointed him, as 72-hole tournaments were, for him and his peers, the true test of a player.”

Either way, if the Saudis are determined to head down the path of Mickelson it’d create a true world tour, a concept Thomson had supported both in word and deed his whole life. Those good enough to succeed would be hugely rewarded financially and it’d created something noticeably more competitive than the current half-field, no cut events.

Which brings us to the Cameron Smith question. Writing in his Golf Australia (the other GA) magazine column this month, my friend John Huggan suggests: “Smith’s switch to LIV was “a dubious choice to make at [his] time of life and career, even if the short-term ‘benefit’ was obvious - a large amount of Saudi cash.

“But the suspicion (or the fear) was that such a switch would have a detrimental effect on Smith’s level of performance, either immediately or more gradually. Whatever, to give up the possibility of immortality was disappointing to those who value such things over cash in the bank.

"History books, after all, tend to be way more impressed by glittering trophies than filthy lucre.”

Of course it’s utterly unknowable. Matt Cleary, another of the magazine’s commentators weighed in on the debate, writing: “But we don't know that in Smith's case. Could be he’s playing shit golf because it’s golf, and sometimes you play shit golf. Maybe he's just in a slump, his first ever one, and he's not sure what to do.”

I’ve always thought Smith would have been better off sticking with the PGA Tour because it’s unquestionably more competitive, but there is an obvious, close to home, counter to the argument.

Ian Baker-Finch won The Open in 1991 and fewer than 12 months earlier Wayne Grady the PGA Championship at Shoal Creek. My guess is had LIV been around in the early 1990s both would have signed but as Grady said: “It’s a completely unanswerable question. Hell, the whole tour in America was barely worth $100 million (Smith’s rumoured signing fee) back then.”

Fair to say Grady is in the Huggan camp on Smith. “He’d just won the Players and The Open and was one of the best five players in the world. And, at that level, the money ought to be irrelevant. Certainly, in my view, though it’s hurt his legacy. And how much money do you need?”

Of course, if Baker-Finch had signed with a LIV-like tour in 1992 and had his game fallen off the cliff inside a couple of years (which it did) everyone would have blamed it on walking away from the most competitive tour in the world and taking the easy money.

And, they’d have been wrong.

One thing, however, is certain. Neither LIV nor the PGA Tour play a golf course remotely close to the class of Royal Portrush.

The unquestioned greatness of the golf course and how the best players and manage the ever-present quirks and fortune of good draws and bad bounces is the primary fascination this week. And whether, this time around, Rory McIlroy can keep his tee shot inside the white stakes down the left side of the opening hole. Assuming he can, he is likely to be somewhere close on Sunday night and it goes without saying there would be no more popular winner with the locals.

It’s also a heavy burden to bear.