It's Official: Phil Mickelson is a Complete Asshole

As we head into the PGA Championship, you might have noticed that defending champion Phil Mickelson is not in the field.  In seven decades prior to Phil, only a handful of golfers failed to defend their major championship titles-- and all of those cases were due to illness or death.  But Mickelson has now willingly skipped both the Masters and the PGA to avoid facing the media and the scorn of his fans.  How could the outpouring of affection that unfolded at last year's PGA victory fade so completely in just one year's time? 

Mickelson has always been something of a rebel within the sport, reveling in the opportunity to needle not only the PGA Tour, but also the USGA, the PGA of America, the media and even his longtime rival Tiger Woods.  But winning a major at 50 seemed to only embolden certain aspects of his personality. Since then, Mickelson has used Twitter to tell stories, trash-talk friends and rivals, aggressively promote companies he'd invested in, and air grievances big and small.

He attacked an investigative reporter from the Detroit News for writing an unflattering (but accurate) story about how a mob-connected bookie had refused to pay Mickelson a $500,000 gambling debt; he floated the nutty idea that his excessive coffee-drinking habit had protected him from catching COVID; he claimed that the PGA Tour was holding on to $10-20 billion in "digital moments" that top pros had created; he lied about winning an $8 million first-place prize in the PGA Tour's Player Impact Program; and he claimed he was considering leaving the PGA Tour because of its "obnoxious greed." All this occurred before the release of his disastrous interview with biographer Alan Shipnuck.

In that interview, Mickelson implied he was playing the Saudi-financed LIV Golf and the tour against one another.   "They're scary motherfuckers to get involved with," Mickelson said.  "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."

The fallout was swift and dramatic. One by one, several of golf's biggest stars distanced themselves from LIV Golf and Mickelson.  Word is that not every PGA Tour player is interested in forgiveness for Mickelson. Privately, several have let it be known they don't care if he returns. 

But Mickelson's loyal fans have forgiven him for mistakes in the past. They barely shrugged in 2015, when a California man was sentenced to prison for laundering approximately $2.75 million of Mickelson's money (Mickelson wasn't charged in the case-- talk about privilege).  The next year, the SEC said that Mickelson made $931,000 by purchasing stock on an insider trading tip from sports gambler Billy Walters (Mickelson wasn't criminally charged but agreed to pay back more than $1 million in "ill-gotten gains"-- again, talk about privilege). The federal government believes that Mickelson used some of the money he made to pay Walters for gambling debts. Mickelson's fans forgave him again after he  cheated at the 2018 U.S. Open, when he intentionally hit a moving ball on the slick 13th green at Shinnecock during the third round.

This time seems different.  Mickelson seems too flippant about working with the murderers of a journalist and a regime that treats gay people so horrifically.  And it's not only that Mickelson was considering playing a rival league, it's that he and two other unnamed players hired attorneys to draw up the new league's operating agreement. He wasn't just flirting with a breakaway league -- he was helping build it.

And it gets worse.  There are now allegations that he lost more than $40 million gambling from 2010 to 201.  And there is an upcoming book that will reveal that Mickelson refused to testify at Billy Walters' trial (even though it could have helped with his friend's defense) to save his own skin.  "Here is a guy [Mickelson] that all he had to do was come forward and tell the truth," Walters says. "That was all he had to do. The guy wouldn't do that because he was concerned about his image. He was concerned about his endorsements."

Now, nearly all of Mickelson's endorsements have dried up. Longtime sponsors Amstel Light, KPMG and Workday ended their relationships with him. Callaway, which in 2017 signed Mickelson to a contract through the end of his playing career, paused its relationship with him.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that a significant portion of pro golf fans will be "pausing" their relationship with Phony Phil.