In an interview with ESPN, Greg Norman unearthed new details about his Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf Invitational series, as well as the damaging effects of Phil Mickelson’s controversial comments.

The two-time major champion and CEO of LIV Golf Investments said his 14-event upstart league was ready to go back in February, the same week Alan Shipnuck published Mickelson’s “scary motherf—ers” quote in a story for the Fire Pit Collective.

While Norman says the launch was going to happen on Tuesday the 15th or Wednesday the 16th, Mickelson’s alarming quotes in Shipnuck’s story didn’t post until Thursday the 17th.

“We had enough players in our strength of field, or minimal viable product, ready to come on board,” Norman said. “And when all of that happened, everybody got the jitters, and the PGA Tour threatened people with lifetime bans and stuff like that.”

“There’s no question (Mickelson’s comments) hurt,” Norman said. “It hurt a lot of aspects. It hurt the PGA Tour. It hurt us. It hurt the game of golf. It hurt Phil. So yeah, across all fronts. It wasn’t just specifically to us. But it definitely created negative momentum against us.”

Norman told ESPN at least 15 of the world’s top 50 players had committed to LIV Golf a week after SI.com’s Bob Harig reported that 15 of the world’s top 100 players had registered for the first event at Centurion Golf Club in London, June 9-11.

“To this day, we still have players under contract and signed,” Norman said of the players committed to the eight-event series. “The ones who wanted to get out because of the pressure of the PGA Tour gave back their money and got out. Guys had money in their pockets.”

More than 200 players registered for the first event, according to Norman, including two previous world No. 1s. Mickelson’s agent confirmed his client was one of lot to register, saying last week that Mickelson had also registered for the PGA Championship – where he’s the defending champion – and the U.S. Open.

“He’s always going to have an open door,” Norman said of Mickelson. “It’s going to be his decision, his decision only. He’s got a few things he has to work out himself, obviously, with the PGA Tour and where he wants to go with them and how he wants to go with them. I can’t read Phil’s mind because I haven’t spoken with him. From our perspective, I’m always going to be consistent in that I respect Phil. I respect what he’s done for the game of golf, and he’s always going to have an open door to any golf tournament he wants to go play as far as I’m concerned.”

BELOW IS A RECAP OF THE COMMENTS PHIL MADE:

“They’re scary motherf—–s to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. They’ve [the PGA Tour] been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse. As nice a guy as [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won’t do what’s right. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage. I’m not sure I even want [the SGL] to succeed, but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the [PGA] Tour.”

“They are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of digital content we could be using for our social media feeds. The players need to own all of that. We played those shots, we created those moments, we should be the ones to profit. The Tour doesn’t need that money. They are already sitting on an $800 million cash stockpile. How do you think they’re funding the PIP? Or investing $200 million in the European Tour? The Tour is supposed to be a nonprofit that distributes money to charity. How the (hell) is it legal for them to have that much cash on hand? The answer is, it’s not. But they always want more and more. They have to control everything. Their ego won’t allow them to make the concessions they need to.”

“The Tour likes to pretend it’s a democracy, but it’s really a dictatorship,” Mickelson told Shipnuck. “They divide and conquer. The concerns of the top players are very different from the guys who are lower down on the money list, but there’s a lot more of them. They use the top guys to make their own situation better, but the top guys don’t have a say.”

“I know 20 guys who want to do this and if the Tour doesn’t do the right thing, there is a high likelihood it’s going to happen.”

Article originally appeared on: Golfweek.usatoday.com