Professional golf's mass Saudi exodus, which no more than five days ago appeared a fait accompli, is now suddenly on its last legs.

Or, as outspoken critic and firm holdout from the scheme Rory McIlroy put it, "it's dead in the water".

A lot has changed in a week. And the man who has placed himself at the centre of all these swirling developments is Phil Mickelson, who through a series of remarkable interviews and quotes seems to have inadvertently set the whole thing ablaze.

The context to all this is that Mickelson was among a group of players seemingly on the brink of signing contracts with a lucrative series of tournaments funded by the Saudi Arabian government and run by Greg Norman's LIV Golf company.

Last week, respected US golf writer Alan Shipnuck — more on him later — had suggested LIV Golf had secured commitments from enough players that a formal announcement of their identity was imminent.

Exactly which players were set to be involved was still largely a matter of conjecture and rumour, but the biggest names suggested were Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson, both major winners in the prime of their careers.

Australian Adam Scott had given a winking answer last week, saying he was interested in the possibilities the schedule would allow for him and his family.

Then there were quotes from players like Ian Poulter, Charley Hoffman, Jason Kokrak and Lee Westwood, among others, that were a long way removed from the "no way, never" that most PGA Tour stars had offered.

But DeChambeau and Johnson were the big ones. If they went, the events would gain a gravitas that past-their-prime former stars simply could not provide.

All was in readiness for the revolution, it seemed. And then Shipnuck dropped the bomb.

He had been working alongside Mickelson on a soon-to-be-released biography and had obtained some quotes from Lefty in which he very much said the quiet part loud.

"They're scary motherf***ers to get involved with," Mickelson said of the Saudi government.

"They killed [Washington Post reporter 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."

The quotes spread quickly, and well outside golf circles. Mickelson had forgone the normal "growing the game" and "you should see what it's really like over there" cliches and straight out admitted he was leveraging the Saudi government, with all their conceded horrors, against the PGA Tour.

For what exactly? Among other things, Mickelson had previous spoken about his issue with the Tour's image rights deal, which he claims — without showing his workings — has cost him around $20 billion throughout his career.

Regardless, Mickelson's comments threw the spotlight on everything that was wrong about this plan from the beginning, and players hit back.

Justin Thomas called it an "egotistical statement". McIlroy said Mickelson had been "naïve, selfish, egotistical, ignorant".

But the real damage was to come via two statements, formally released while the final round of the Genesis Invitational was being played at Riviera Country Club.

The first was from Johnson.

"There has been a great deal of speculation about an alternative tour. I feel it is now time to put such speculation to rest," he said.

Four hours later, DeChambeau followed suit.

"While there has been a lot of speculation surrounding my support for another tour, I want to make it very clear that as long as the best players in the world are playing the PGA Tour, so will I," DeChambeau said.

Just how much these two abrupt and surprising statements were impacted by the release of Mickelson's damaging quotes is hard to quantify. But it's reasonable to suggest it became an awful lot more difficult for these players to align themselves with the Saudi events while still trying to play down the political and human rights issues that surround them once Mickelson had lobbed them to the forefront.

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So what's next? LIV Golf is too far in for this thing to fall through entirely now, but fears of golf's elite jumping ship have subsided for now.

The older generation may still be tempted over by promises of a bumped-up retirement fund and a less taxing schedule, but a spruced up Champions Tour isn't going to change the face of golf as we know it.

History suggests this won't be the end though. This isn't the first time rival tours have threatened the PGA Tour, and it isn't even the first time Norman has been involved.

But all have faltered at the same hurdle — it only takes one crack in the playing group for the whole thing to fall down.

It just so happens that this time the crack came from the very same person who was trying to hold everything together.