フィル・ミケルソンに一体何が起こったのか？

フィル・ミケルソンに一体何が起こったのか？ | PTFO

Welcome to Pablo Tore Finds Out. I am Pablo Tore and today we’re going to find out what this sound is. I shouldn’t do this. I know this is dangerous. I know this is a bad move. Everyone told me not to call this guy. Oh, I’m down the number. How many jokes can we make in one podcast? You and you and compliment set the bar pretty high. But it’s it’s it’s a lot. It’s it’s too much. Um, my mom has informed me it is too much for the record here. But I do need to explain Alan Shipnook. Thank you for joining us again, by the way. Delighted to be here. I got to explain why you’re the guy I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been dealing with the one and only Phil Mickelson on X, the Everything app, in which I have been feeling a bit like you. just a glimmer of what your life might have been like as the foremost expert certainly the author of the book on Phil Mickelson entitled Phil which you published in 2022 but you’ve become the guy you’re the guy I come to because do you remember what he called you by the way the quote that I’m about to say Phil’s called me many things through the years but um with Phil it’s all projection you know every every accusation is a confession it’s a little Trumpy in in that regard. The quote from Phil Mickelson on Twitter, November 22nd, 2023, 5:23 p.m. Eastern, was Allan is the worst liar and a pathetic human. You know, it’s interesting because Phil said various things about the book that I wrote. I corresponded with at least three of his lawyers. I don’t know how many he has, but I was in touch with three of them. You know, the courts are available to a guy like Phil Mickelson. If I was in fact telling lies, then that would be lielist. He he would have had a strong case if if everything he believed was true, but it’s just it’s just not. I just need to catch people up to the version of Phil that I have encountered on the internet. The brief speedrun through all of this though is that Hunter Brook Media, my friend Sam Kppelman, did a piece in which he investigated this group chat that Phil Mickelson was an active participant in. And it’s all these bros who are really into this one company, Sable Offshore, which happens to be an oil pipeline off of Santa Barbara. Was President Trump going to come and save it over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsome? All of that is is part of the sort of brass tax here. But I quote tweet the original article. I say, “What do I get the feeling that this is not the end of this story?” And then Phil tweets something back about how, you know, he’s ultra careful, that there’s nothing to see here, that, you know, this is, how dare you insinuate wrongdoing, all that stuff. So, I respond uh with an offer to discuss on the show on Pablo Finds Out. No response to that. What Phil responds after the episode comes out in response to my original request for comment on Twitter was quote, “I’ve never heard of you and have no idea who you are, but given what I know to be true and what you report, you’re tabloid and I’ll wait for the right opportunity. Thumbs up emoji.” Then I say, “Uh, you know, hi Phil. I’m still the same person you replied to last week. I’m been trying to fact check what you meant when you wrote this to a group chat of Sable Offshore investors. Quote, “Big daddy Trump ready to swing his 14-in in front of Newsome’s face will drive up any stock.” End quote. Thanks, Pablo. No response. And in that back and forth, the thought occurred to me, I need to talk to Allen. Phil is a once- ina lifetime character for us in the sports media. He loves to talk. He loves to take up space. He loves the sound of his own voice. It’s been said many times, he always has to be the smartest guy in the room. And wasn’t there an Enron documentary that was called the smartest guys in the room? Like when I was doing the book, Davis Love told me a funny story about Phil. He said Phil is the only guy out here who likes to play in the proams. You know, we all hate the proams. It’s six hours and tedious. But Phil, he’ll play with like a heart surgeon and pump him for info and the rest of his life he thinks he’s an authority on heart surgery and then he’ll do it the next week with a dentist and the next week with a pilot and Phil just loves to pretend he knows everything and he’s un undeniably a bright guy but he’s not as smart as he thinks he is and that’s how he gets himself in these situations. I want to make clear that when you wrote your book, it wasn’t and this is according to the New York Times, by the way, because I think it sets the stage for like what we’re trying to do here, which is actually answer a couple questions that I have that I want to pose to you because your book, according to the New York Times, quote, is not a drive by character assassination. Shipnook generally admires Mickelson and takes note of his philanthropy, his sunny disposition, his dead pan wit, his many acts of random kindness, and the fact that he’s not a sore loser. The question though of like what happened to Phil Mickelson and when did it start happening and who is he really? Those are some of the things that I think requires this trip back in time to when you first encountered him because it is nuanced. It is more interesting than just here’s a guy on Twitter who sucks who claims now this allegiance to Donald Trump’s Republican party. There’s something else happening that is legitimately super fascinating to me. I mean, Phil voted for Obama. He was kind of the classic California dude, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, whatever that means. You know, his wife Amy, they tend to be left-leaning and open-minded. And that was always kind of the Mickelsons that we knew. And where did he take this hard right turn? Is it strictly performative because he’s already angling for a pardon for whatever crimes he may or may not have committed? I mean, you can never put anything past Phil. He’s a master manipulator. He He is always playing, you know, 5D chess and it blows up on him. He He sets himself on fire, but sometimes maybe it works out. We’ll see how this whole thing plays out. I mean, I I saw you retweeted, Pablo, that now all of a sudden the Trump administration’s like, “Yeah, we love offshore oil drilling off the coast of California.” Mickelson may become a billionaire out of this deal. Like, and he’ll be laughing at all of us, but you just never know with this guy. He’s just he’s always working an edge. Always working an edge. And seated on my immediate left is Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson, who really needs no introduction. So, we’re going to dispense with one. Phil, thanks for being here. Happy to do it. It’s fun to start the year. So in 2017, I went to the Madison Club, this very exclusive private golf club in Palm Springs area, and Phil had this secret layer up in the clubhouse, and we retreated there and did this very long in-depth podcast, and I believe it’s the only real podcast he’s ever done except for maybe some smaller promotional things around live golf. and he was interested in the medium and he wanted to talk address the fact that your your offseason preparation has been compromised a little bit by the sports hernia surgery. I have a theory that the injury occurred at the Ryder Cup because your balls got so big and heavy they possibly created some sort of stretching or tearing. I’m not a doctor, but am I on the right track there? Well, it’s uh it was an umbilical hernia, so it was behind my belly button. What you’re referring to is a little bit lower. I do appreciate that. I it’s probably one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me over the years. And I said, “Why are you not on social media? You would kill because you’re you’re funny. You’ve got a needle.” He said, “Because of my personality, I I’ll it’ll I’ll go in too deep.” He’s like, “Once I start, I’ll never stop.” I have a a mind that kind of dives into things all in that we talk about. And I think it’s a very positive thing, but it can be a negative thing. I’ve never tried a recreational drug in my life because I am scared out of my mind that if I were to ever try something like that, I could easily get dive right down that path and and be all in on that. Amy describing to me as like obsessive and I think he is about a lot of things. Do you remember the first time you got quality time with Phil Mickelson? When that was, where that was? It would have been in 1994. I was an intern at our beloved alma mater, Sports Illustrated. And Phil was the first one at that level who really understood how to play the game with the media. Like Jack Nicholas famously knew the name of every reporter. He knew their first name. And when they’d ask a question, he’d be like, he’s like, “Well, Pablo, you know, that’s a very insightful question.” Like Jack was not subtle about it. And you know, you’re sitting in your chair like, “Oh, Jack liked my It always worked.” Alan, that move has a 100% success rate with us sad reporters who are like charmed. Totally. But like Phil went to the next level, you know, he was he started taking guys out for dinner. He he would start playing casual rounds of golf. Like he really took it to a different level of creating relationships. Now he came up to me and he kind of introduced himself. He’s like, “Oh, I I hear you’re, you know, at Sports Illustrated.” And um, you know, someone told me you’d be the next Rick Riley. Which is an amazing thing because, you know, Riley was a god back then. and I was a lowly intern and um you know he lays it on thick and of course I was like oh wow I didn’t even know Phil knew who I was and so like how many superstars in a sport are going to go up introduce themselves to an intern you know that golf is a little more cloistered incestuous be but nevertheless let me let me be clear about this I have never heard of someone of that stature taking the time to fluff someone of so little stature at the time exactly that was Phil so Um, it’s easy to forget now with all the bluster and the [ __ ] you know, who Phil was. And it was a particularly dark time for American golf. You know, the best players were Cory Paven and Marco Meer and Tom Layman. I’m falling asleep remembering those names. Exactly. Very boring, very Anodine. Charisree. And Phil arrived and he had aura. Certainly this one finally left of the hole. Good looking. That putt to win the golf tournament. The 20-year-old amateur Phil Mickelson. You know, he had charisma. He was a star before he even got to the PGA Tour. He won a professional tournament while he was still in undergrad at Arizona State. Bill Nicholson feel I really played well. But yeah, that put on eight was was great. Uh, boy, I talk about chills in your spine. That was that was them right there. And he had the popped collar and he had the slick back hair. He’s a good-looking guy and he was the can’t miss kid in golf. He was Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods arrived. And Phil was a larger than life character. You know, even early on, he lived big. He got his pilot’s license. He drove fast cars. He had a beautiful wife. He was a cheerleader for the Phoenix Suns. and he played the game in this this crazy sort of way where he was always living on the edge. It was high risk, high reward. What a putt. What a putter. What a performance by Mickelson. He would self emilate occasionally, but he was winning tournaments at at a regular clip. And for three or four years, Phil was the golden boy. And then Tiger Woods turned pro and threw into sharp relief all the flaws in Phil’s game and lifestyle. You know, Tiger never respected Phil because he recognized this was an awesome physical talent who was not really maximizing what he’d been given. And in Tiger’s world, that was the ultimate sin. Look, the whole thing of you getting access to Phil at the house, you getting access uh through this relationship that you’re building with his wife Amy, who was essentially, by the way, like his his flack, his like PR rep, uh the person handling like his public image in in lots of different ways. But it it reminds me of like Phil at his at his most fun, you know, for people who don’t remember what that was like. What was the part that was legitimately charming that you were like, “This is a blast to be in this guy’s orbit.” Yeah, I mean, he’s a performer on the golf course, in the press tent, you know, on the rope line, signing autographs. He just he loves the spotlight. And so, his pre-ournament press conferences were electric because you never know what he’d say. Can you tell us a little bit about the name Mickson and whether there’s any Scottish heritage to that? I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe a wee bit. He wasn’t that careful. And again, this is all in you can’t talk about Phil without talking about Tiger. And you know, Tiger is the ultimate soulless kind of corporate warrior and you know, he’s like he’s got dead eyes and he he’s his mouth’s moving but he’s not really saying anything. And Phil would come in and he was freewheeling and fun and he’s giving reporters and then it was just the way they played the game. You know, obviously Tigers was at at the most exacting tournaments on the harshest setups. Tiger’s way was was clearly superior. That’s why he won all those major championships. And it took Phil a long time to figure out the formula. But week to week, Phil was just more fun in in every way. More fun to watch, more fun to interview, more fun to watch him interact with the fans. Uh he was just a performer and he made the golf beat quite lively for for everybody. Yeah. I’m reminded of a part of your book where you’re in now. Uh, I think it’s 1999 and you have this encounter with Phil. What was that story? The Golf Beats is is unusual because like if you’re the NFL writer for Sports Illustrated, you might not see the same team twice in a season until the playoffs. You know, you’re bouncing around. Golf is just the same people week after week. You know, I I call it high school with private jet money and it’s this very incestuous world. And so there was always this chumminess between the reporters and the players because you just had to see each other every week. And when I came out, you know, at Sports Illustrated, we did things a little differently. And like my mandate was like to cover golf like the other sports. And so I would say some of my coverage had a slightly harder edge or was more sardonic or whatever. And that graded on Phil. And again, now we’re into this era where, you know, Tiger is the man and Phil is been very quickly relegated from the headliner to the undercard. And I was doing a mailbag back then. Um, you know, this was this was the ‘9s, so it was a little ahead of its time. And there were a lot of jokes about Phil’s weight back then. And I do remember one reader wrote in, and you know, I didn’t publish it, so it’s sort of on me, but the guy like, “Oh, I hear the Mickelsons are pregnant.” And you know which one, Phil or Amy? You know, it was stuff like that. It was a little sophomore, so my bad. But that wasn’t those weren’t my words, but it was in my mailbag. So, it was stuff like that that he was upset about. So, so Phil pulls me into the the grand under the grand stand at Madina Country Club, which is this very regal setting in golf, by the way. And it’s it’s Sunday, the PJ Championship. Tiger’s going to win. There’s a great feeling in the air. You know, this is Tiger’s first major. This he will have won since the the apocalle 97 masters and it’s all anyone can think about and you know Phil’s mad at me about some random line in a mailbag from 6 months earlier. Like it’s just incredible. And um yeah, so we I mean he’s standing so close to me and Phil’s a big dude. He’s like 6’3 and you know I can smell his breath. It was um pungent and he’s like just throw the first punch. And it was so ridiculous because unlike Phil who’s, you know, was gonna finish 82nd or something, like I still had to work. I had to write a cover story about Tiger Woods winning the PGA Championship. Like it it was just the most idle threat. He knows I’m not going to throw the first punch. I know he’s not going to throw the first punch because he’s this this this uh guy who has a reputation to protect. So the semantics of it were were ridiculous. Like if he he should have just said, “I think you’re a dick.” Like that would have been more to the point. But just throw the first punch. It’s like come on. So then we go back and forth and we uh have a philosophical discussion about the role of the media and but he says something that’s really interesting at the end. You know he said you think you know me but you don’t and it was like you know he had a little Clint Eastwood squint and there was a little bit almost of a dare is how it came to germinate in my brain. And as I got into the reporting the book I realized yeah I I I thought I did know him but I really don’t. He wasn’t wrong. I mean, just so many contradictions and and so many shadows and and so many skeletons and so many secrets and as as public a life as he’s led and the way he’s chewed the scenery, there’s so much that people didn’t know. And that’s why we’re doing this podcast, Pablo. Like, it’s it’s there’s there’s a whole there’s a whole world in that sentence. I’m always like wary of like, okay, are we psychoanalyzing somebody? But two things are true here. You spoke to like hundreds of people for your book and also Phil Mickelson himself a psychology major. Yeah. I mean that’s like you know his wife Amy famously beautiful and talking about their their romance Phil tells me like the physiological response of the human body for fear is the same as it is for arousal. So when you’re afraid your heart pumps faster and your lungs expand and your nostrils flare and your senses become much more acute and that’s um what happens when you’re aroused you know. So what I would do is I would uh I had to I would take Amy or you know to a suspenseful movie, not a horror movie, but a suspenseful movie. And during this suspenseful time, I would grab their hand and I would kind of rub it you know during this and she would displace her fear as arousal or attraction for me. And that’s how I was able to, you know, when when I didn’t have as much to work with was able to uh to land such a gem. I just want to reiterate, quote, “She would displace her fear as arousal or attraction for me.” I’m just like, it sounds so romantic. But but there is but there there there is the whole like the through line that you’re identifying is the dude is up to something. Everything about Phil is just funny. I mean, until it’s not like like and then he it’s it’s gotten he’s gotten edgier and he’s gotten more polarizing and and it’s turned in it’s kind of turned a little bit, but for most of his life it was just it was just you had to roll your eyes and laugh. I mean, look, the whole thing of how much money has Phil made like the the large ass of of being what was it the second highest earner on the tour for a long which is like effectively how so how much money has Phil earned when you just talk about what he made off of golf and like marketing on the books? Oh yeah. I mean he was making almost $und00 million a year. Like Tiger was at 120. Phil was like in the 80s or 90s like he had blue chip sponsorship deals and he had a bunch of them and part of it was because like these financial services company which is also hilarious. Phil’s always been sponsored by financial services companies, but they’d pay him $10 million a year and he’d wear the logo and that’s cool. You know, you but what they were really buying was his time because Phil would come in for these outings with the most important investors and clients and they he would request a binder and he would study it. So, let’s say it’s uh you know, KPMG or Bearing Point or whatever the company was, they bringing in 40 dudes for a proam. Phil would get a dossier on all 40 and he’d memorize it. So he’d meet this guy and he like, “Hey, hey Jim, I heard you won your club championship. Congratulations.” And like, “Hey Bob, I heard your daughter got a scholarship to Stanford to play volleyball. I’m so proud.” Like, and people were so dazzled by Phil. And no one else would make that kind of effort. And that’s part of why he was valuable. And it was partly just his stick. Like he loved that reaction. And so Phil had all these all these huge deals. So he’s probably earned easily a billion dollars. Now you may remember Phil had this big public dust up where he complained about the tax rate in California. And Phil Mickelson making some noise. He’s hosting a big golf term this week saying that he’s going to have to make some drastic changes because of what’s gone on in terms of taxes in California. But this is one of his many little scandals and this is going back 20 years. The four-time major champ who ras in nearly 50 million a year says he’s not yet sure if he’ll leave California for a less taxing state. He also apologized for offending anyone. I think that it was insensitive to talk about publicly to those who to those people who uh are not able to find a job that are struggling paycheck to paycheck on Sunday. This is a funny story. So he complains on national TV about how much he has to pay in taxes and no one’s making him live in California. Most of his brethren have moved to Florida, Arizona. He’s chosen to be in California cuz he’s from California and we, you know, he likes the weather, he likes the lifestyle. Like, sure, like, it’s a choice, Phil. Then before his next tournament and he’s going to go in and have to face the music and and do a press conference, they’re out in the parking lot and there’s his PR guy and there’s a tour staffer and they’re kind of strategizing and the tour staffer says to Phil, “Listen, Phil, nobody wants to hear, you know, a guy who’s making $40 million complain about their taxes.” And Phil’s like, “It’s 50.” I mean, um, that’s not really the point of this conversation. We’re trying to get your ass out of trouble here, Phil. But even then, he can’t get he’s just Amy used a word once to describe her husband that he’s a rascal. That is a great word. It’s always stuck with me. And he just can’t control himself. And so Phil had he made a hell of a lot of money, but he had a very high burn rate from the mansions, from the G5, from, you know, Amy, she liked to buy nice gifts. She bought Phil a T-Rex skull for a birthday present. I don’t know how much a T-Rex skull cost, but you can’t get that at Macy’s, right? Like, you know, she bought him a meteor that was like like, you know, weighed like a,000 pounds. Anytime your gifts end up sounding like things in a super villain’s layer, you’re like, I think he might have too much money. Yeah. So, Phil made a lot, but even just the the the obvious trappings of, you know, conspicuous consumption, like he had a high burn rate. Then you get into the gambling and that’s where you know it was going out the door really fast. The the the accounting by the way just to recap it briefly like what Billy Walters says you know citing his two very reliable sources and the betting records that formed the foundation of this part of his book. You know we’re talking about losses of approximately $und00 million according to Walters while betting more than a billion over the last 30 years. And so whatever the truth is inside of this triangulation of just estimates, it is, as far as I can tell, the most a pro alete has ever wagered on sports over the course of a career. You know, Phil lost a lot of fans over how he treated his caddy, Jim Mcai, famously known as Bones. And this all came out in my book. It had never really been reported before, that he owed Bones about $900,000 through the years. And when the FedEx Cup was first introduced, this big season ending Bonanza bonus program, you know, a lot of it was deferred. The first year, the guy who ever won $10 million, like 9 million of it went to his retirement account. And so, how do you pay your Caddy off of that? And then the deferred compensation went away, but it was still it was like this new thing that every player and Caddy had to kind of account for because it wasn’t really traditional earnings. It’s a bonus. Caddy deserves some. how much, whatever. So, this was not an unusual negotiation. And so, Phil and Bones kind of talked it out, but like Phil never paid. It just kind of started accumulating. And so, $900,000 is a lot of money to anybody. It’s especially a lot to a caddy. But they were having success. They were winning. Bones was he didn’t want to rock the boat. He was just kind of waiting for Phil to make him whole. And finally, eventually when they decide to part ways, Phil sends him two checks and it totals 800,000, not 900. like even so he just like it’s like a little [ __ ] you like I’m just gonna hang on to a little bit just you know and it wasn’t a written contract it’s not like Bones is going to sue him in a court of law it so he just had to swallow it but why didn’t Phil pay him like was he really in such a cash crunch he just couldn’t pay Bones the money I mean it seems fantastical given how much he was making but Phil Miglesson made a fortune how much of it did he hold on to that is the enduring question right which then informs the potential motives for why is he always trying to swing for the fences financially is that again and I think there are multiple uh multiple through lines here a he always does this with everything so there’s just that consistency and then there’s also just the well maybe he also needs it more than we realize how much did that drive his behavior to go to live golf and get that $200 million payday although it was a little less than 200 he got a haircut after my book came out but we got to talk about live golf because it’s it’s so fundamental to to Phil and the very short version is that Phil for decades had these gripes with the PGA tour and he was always whether it was Tim Fincham or Jay Monahan the the two commissioners he was always going to them these big ideas how to blow up the tour how to change it how to improve it and they’d sort of pat him on the head and send him on his way and when live golf was percolating that gave Phil the leverage he always wanted. And so that’s what he famously told me. You know, why am I negotiating with these scary [ __ ] Because this is a once in a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PJ tour does its business. In a piece posted on the Fire Pit Collective, the World Golf Hall of Famer told journalist Alan Shipnook, the author of an upcoming unauthorized biography of Mickelson that he would support the new league even though the Saudis are scary to get involved with. We know they killed Kosoi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once ina-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. I’m not sure I even want it to succeed. But just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the PGA Tour. Phil was working both sides of the street. He was trying to make all these structural changes, the PJ tour in case he stayed. He basically helped write the constitution of live golf in case that launched. Uh the predecessor to live golf was something called the Premier Golf League. Phil was involved with those guys. Phil also went to, you know, these private equity dudes and tried to steal all the IP and just create his own live golf. Like, he was working four sides of the street more or less simultaneously. It’s interesting how it might or might not have played out if he never picked up the phone and called me and told me the things he did. What I didn’t fully appreciate until you’re articulating it now, I think, is the reason this guy who always has an angle was calling you. the guy famously working on this biography that was unauthorized that was collecting hundreds of testimonies of all these people around him. The reason he was calling you was was what what’s the what was his actual game there? So yeah, I mean I went to Phil face to face, asked him to do sit down interviews for the book three times. He said no, but he knew the deadline and he called me a week before the deadline because in the end, and this is my speculation, but very informed in speculation, is that he just couldn’t stand the idea that I was going to write about this chapter of his life and a professional golf and not fully appreciate how smart he was and that he had outsmarted the Saudis. He had outsmarted the PGA Tour and that he had finessed this entire situation. And I had to understand that and give him the credit that he desperately needed. That’s it. That’s the only reason because his lawyers told him not to call me. His agent told him not to call me. And he kind of white knuckled his way all the way through the process until I was about to hit said. He’s like, “No, I I got to tell him. I I got to tell him.” And it’s it’s unbelievable. And he could have called any other reporter and still kind of put his story out there. And he could have he could have tried to get, you know, his flowers a different way. He could have called he could have called actual Rick Riley. Yeah. He there’s he had 20 reporters in his phone. He could have called. He called me. It’s just it’s truly unbelievable. It’s a whole pattern of how he’s lived his life. And it’s like, you know, it’s how he’s gotten himself into two insider trading scandals. Like there’s a lot of easy ways to make money. When you’re sitting on a lot of money, you can make more money pretty easily, right? Put in the bond market, whatever. You can you can buy Apple stock. There’s it’s not that hard. But it’s more fun if you’re Phil to like get a little tip and feel like you’re getting over everybody else. Like I honestly believe that’s what it is. I’m not even sure it’s about the money. It’s just the adrenaline. It’s just, you know, there’s a there’s a good quote from Stuart Sink, who’s a contemporary of Phil’s, and he says, you know, Phil’s the ultimate juice guy. He just needs juice and everything he does. The practice round wagers, the crazy shot selection during the tournament. And, you know, Sink said, “Where does math meet juice?” Vegas. That’s why I feel so into gambling. It’s just I mean, of course, the money’s part is like that’s part of the drug, but it’s really about the juice. And I think that’s what it comes down to in these deals. It’s, you know, it it’s just the juice. And um and so that was picking up the phone and calling me was the juice. Like, oh, I shouldn’t do this. I know this is dangerous. I know this is a bad move. Everyone told me not to call this guy. Oh, I’m dialing the number. Oh my, you know, my heart’s racing. Like, I just It’s like, you know, you and I go bungee jumping. Phil does it in other ways. But it’s it’s been a pattern for decades. And you don’t have to be Sigman Freud here to figure out what’s going on. Like the first insider trading case was almost a decade ago and he skated on that one. He he he refused to testify. That could have could have kept his his close friend out of jail, Billy Walters. Phil had to give back uh a million dollars in quote unquote illotten gains back to the government, but he ultimately wasn’t he wasn’t charged with a crime and he was just named as a relief defendant. But it definitely could have gone another way for him. But he he you know he do need his way out of that. So at that point I’m probably going to give up the market. Like I’m probably not going to be in shady group chats. Like I’m just going to sit on my pile of money and put it somewhere safe and but you know that’s not Phil. He he needs the juice. So Oh you you’ve got some you got some weird underground oil pipeline. Yeah. Bring it on, baby. Let’s go. I want to turn to just his online persona. When did that turn in your view? Like when did it emerge that like wait a minute hold on the Phil as this internet character that has fundamentally changed some? Yeah. So, I think it was always in there, but it was kind of disguised because when we were driving around in his golf cart in Rancho Santa Fe, he made some very So, that was I think 2018. This is way before live golf. And he was talking about, okay, we’re finally going to leave California. We’re looking at this land in Florida. Like, I’m getting out of this this hell hole kind of. That was kind of his thing. And he had some strong things to say. That part of the conversation is off the record, which I always honor, so I can’t go into the specifics, but loosely was about taxes. Some of it was cultural. And so I think I mean, you see this in people as they age and they get they can become more conservative. It wasn’t so outlandish that I never heard it before, but the persona kind of curdled in the Liv golf years. And there’s, you know, Liv was this group of renegades. They were kind of like flying the pirate flag and they took pride in being iconoc class and being risktakers and and kind of breaking up the this stodgy sport. Because of that, no one wanted to host golf tournaments in the the first year. They were struggling to get venues. only one person with a portfolio of golf courses really raised their hand and said, “I’d love to have you guys.” And that was Donald Trump. So, right from the beginning, he threw them a lifeline. And of course, he was being paid millions of dollars to host these tournaments that are operated by the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia. Unprecedented situation for a former president, but we know that um Trump has a flexible view on these things. And so, there was this nexus between Trump and Liv from day one. And a lot of the players had felt encumbered while they’re on the PGA tour about speaking out on certain things, including social issues. And they’d been discouraged from doing that by their agent, by the tour infrastructure. And Liv was a much more unbridled atmosphere, shall we say, and especially the first couple years, like anything goes. the players started speaking more freely about their own political beliefs, their own um their own thoughts on current events, world events. Um but they had this close relationship with Trump and so they were especially prone to amplifying certain talking points. And so you you know you saw that with Phil right away. I mean Bryson Dashambo was up on stage on election night when when Trump was reelected. Whether there’s any left-leaning players on live golf, they certainly haven’t voiced that. You know, I think there’s been this conformity of thought and there’s been this uh almost pure pressure like if you’re going to speak out like this is our agenda. I think Phil already had those feelings. He kind of held them in. Once he got to live golf and he he sused out the political climate, he just let it rip. Well, you know, the people I think of when I watch and and unfortunately continue to read his Twitter feed and I see not just like the Trump favoring that’s sucking up, but when I see Phil Mickelson’s Twitter account these days, the people I think of on Twitter who remind me of this sort of evolution that I’ve been able to watch from afar are Aaron Rogers and Elon Musk. when I just think of like, oh wait a minute, like these were guys who were once known as very media friendly, left-leaning actually, known for being interesting, known for having personality, known for being expansive and thoughtful, who were fun. And sometime over the pandemic and certainly uh in the years since, they became these sort of culture warriors who I think are not just defined by like wanting to say the thing that feels unsayable in polite company. They’re also sort of defined, in my view at least, as almost projecting this misery. And now it just seems like every time I read the transcript of a group chat or just what he’s tweeting, it just seems like there’s a sadness there. And I wonder if you’ve noticed that, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s sort of like a siege mentality. I think for Phil, it really started with the Billy Walters case because, you know, he was in legal jeopardy. He certainly took some hits. You know, he lost sponsors, um, all of that. But Billy Walters is a very, very popular guy uh, in the golf world because he’s just fun to be around. He loves to play golf. And Phil and Billy were members at two of the same clubs, which is the Madison Club in Palm Springs and the Rancho Santa Fe Country Club where um, you know, they both have homes. And people kind of had to take a side. Are you on Billy’s side or you on Phil’s side? Because you couldn’t be on both. And pretty much the entire world took Billy’s side and Phil became kind of this outcast and anecdotally not really welcome at either of those places that used to be his stomping grounds. You know, Phil’s whole life had been this great escape, this great up and down. You know, he did on the golf course and he did it away from the golf course. He was always able to just finesse it. He was just always able to, you know, um just get out of a jam. That was the first time it really caught up with him. Not legally, but in his in his social world, his reputation in golf, a lot of people turned their back on Phil after that. And then you fast forward to the live golf that really turned him into a pariah. And so I think that that that joyfulness that Phil exuded, that that little twinkle in his eye, it just got extinguished. And um now he’s under siege again. And of course, it’s all of his own doing. I’m I’m not saying it’s not I’m not asking for sympathy on behalf of Phil Mickelson, but I think it explains where he is emotionally. And um the Elon Musk parallel is interesting. You know, Elon blames the woke left for um you know, indoctrinating his his transgender child. That I think that’s that’s a big part of Elon’s story. I would say there’s there’s someone in Phil’s life who um has been gender fluid and um I think it’s caused some pain for him in his as a human as a person and he’s adopted Elon’s outlook that it’s the woke left’s fault and so it’s a very fascinating parallel between those those two characters. like that’s one thing they have in common and I think it’s political, it’s personal, it’s uh part of this larger cultural war on the media. It’s it’s everything. And I suppose there is something that I find deeply sad but also relatable near the end here as I contemplate like what is who is Phil Mickelson? This person that I found myself arguing with on Twitter lately. He’s a guy who is living his life online. It just seems like he’s a guy whose brain has been consumed by the internet. And I hate to do the legacy exercise, but I think in this case, it’s actually instructive. Like, what’s different now in 2025 about what you might have written as the guy assigned this particular story? It’s just so classic, Phil, for him to say, “I don’t know who you are.” Like, you’ve been on a generational heater. Um, it would take one quick Google search to figure out who you are. He also just had responded to me a week before. That was that’s that’s the thing. I’m just like I get it. Maybe you didn’t watch ESPN or whatever between the hours of 5 and 6 p.m. Eastern over the course of the last 13 years. That’s totally fine. Even though you love sports betting. Um I’m just wondering like do you just not remember that you replied to me a week ago? It’s just it’s like it’s nonsensical. And this was this is a funny thing where long after um you know my book came out, Phil tried to tried to make the bad faith argument that our conversation was off the record even though I’d requested multiple times to interview him for the book. And he said to me, I don’t want to talk about anything for the book other than Saudi Arabia. Like and also I had fact checked some stuff from our conversation through his lawyer. Obviously that going in the book if I’m factecking like I think people saw through that is just total BS. But later subsequently someone someone said to him and is this is actually the a live tournament in Saudi Arabia. So he goes back he’s called these guys scary motheruckers. This is the first time he’s going to Saudi Arabia and he’s like kissing babies and trying to create all this goodwill and whatever. Um, and then in this press conference, someone says, “Oh, you know, the interview you did with Alan Shipnick, blah blah blah.” And he said, “I will reiterate, I never did an interview with Alan Shipnick.” And I never did an interview with Alan Shipnick. And mispronounced my last name, even though I’ve known him for 30 years. And someone very close to Phil said he I’m sure he did that on purpose because he was going to be like, “Oh, well, you know, that’s how he’s going to game the system is that he didn’t say shipnook, he said ship Nick.” And so that’s a different person. And what like that’s a pretty funny name. I don’t think there’s any dispute about who I am and what we’re talking about here. And like, but that’s how Phil’s brain is. Like, oh yeah, I can say his name differently and then I can deny it later. Like, so I think that’s kind of like what he was doing with you. I’m going to tweet you, but then it doesn’t work out. But now I don’t know who you are. Like, just clearly also he left again the obvious safe shot on the board at you, which was ship dick. How did he not go just that direction? Well, I mean, we can go back to recess, elementary school. I can give you a whole bunch of variations, but um yeah, you know, he he completely whiff ship cuck. I’m just workshopping now. Like, what would I what would I make fun of you with? He’s really just missing something. It’s objectively a great name for for put downs. But, um so the the Phil legacy, this is one of the bitter ironies in this from Phil’s perspective is he was actually right about a lot of things when you’re talking about this whole war for the soul of professional golf. Like his two main talking points to me was that the players needed more say in their governance on the PJ tour. And you saw that when Jay Monahan, the commissioner, sold them all out and created this backroom deal with the Saudis. And as ever since then, there was so much outrage. They’ve blown the whole thing up. They’ve given the players more seats on the board. The players now run the PG tour. The commissioner role has been so, you know, diminished. Monahan’s retiring and they’re not going to have a commissioner anymore. or they’re going to have a CEO. Like Phil was right about that. And the other thing was that the players should be compensated more. And you know, the tour spent $75 million to build this this headquarters. They had hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves. And then Live Golf arrives, they turn the spigot on, all of a sudden the players are getting paid twice as much as they used to. Like Phil was right about that, too. And so on the merits, he he could be vindicated. He could be the hero to every professional golfer because he tripled their their salaries. He changed the landscape. He he let them run the tour themselves. In fact, the tour had to become it was a a 501c3. It was just a charity organization, a pass through organization. Now, it’s a for-profit with a billion half dollars of investment. So, Phil was was banged on, but no one will ever give him credit because of the way he handled it. He just napalmed the bridges on his way out of town. And so what is his legacy? I mean, he’s clearly one of the 12 to 15 greatest golfers of all time. You can’t take that away from him. But his inability to win the US Open, six runnerups. So even as much as he’s accomplished, the ones that got away are so memorable, he’ll never live them down. And now you get into this late period Phil over the last decade where he’s he’s being investigated by, you know, the SEC and he’s become this this right-wing internet troll. Like it’s just it’s a mixed legacy and it’s all of his own making. And the the craziest thing about all of this is after he won the PG championship in 2021 in his 50s, one of the greatest victory laps in the history of the sport. All he had to do was just ride off into the sunset. He would have been in the tower of gymnants. He would have been Ryder Cup captain. He would have been honorary star of the Masters. He would have made 20 to$50 million a year in perpetuity just doing those things. all the endorsements, all the proams, he had the easiest road in front of him and he gave it all up because he had to be the smartest guy in the room and he had to reinvent professional golf in his image and now he’s a pariah. And so it’s just an incredible own goal, but in his mind he was right about everything and it was worth it. And that’s the ultimate paradox of Phil Mickelson. There is one more thing he was right about. It turns out he was absolutely right about what would happen to him if he logged on to social media. Yes, he was. He called it. Called it, dude. He’s a generational reply guy. This has been Pablo Tore Finds Out, a Metallark Media production. and I’ll talk to you next time.

Why did Phil Mickelson turn on his own legacy to become a culture warrior with a T-rex skull? His definitive chronicler, Alan Shipnuck, re-visits the many scandals of “a master manipulator” — from his wife to LIV to a pipeline — and uncovers a pattern among Trump-era men who just want the juice.