PHIL MICKELSON SHOULD BE BANNED BY (WHOEVER) IS RUNNING THE PGA TOUR
The fact these rumors have transpired for longer than a decade should prompt the so-called commissioner, Jay Monahan, to see if Mickelson wanted to gamble on the 2012 Ryder Cup — and ban him forever
The only overlord that could ban Phil Mickelson is ... who, exactly? Golf is the one sport that doesn’t have a future commissioner, now more than ever. The PGA Tour does have a crank named Jay Monahan, who cut a horrifying deal with the Saudi Arabian monarchy — despite almost a year and a half of bad-mouthing their beheadings — and has no more real information about his dealings with LIV Golf.
But if Monahan did care, he immediately would set aside his dealings with the Saudi Slayers and rule upon the latest fire in his game. In what might be the 10th or 11th story about one of the fading greats, there now is strong evidence that Mickelson bet more than $1 billion on football, basketball and baseball over the last three decades and tried to place a $400,000 wager with Billy Walters, the most successful professional American bettor ever, during the 2012 Ryder Cup.
“I could not believe what I was hearing. Have you lost your %&*$ing mind?” Walters said on that September 2012 day, when Mickelson called from Medinah Country Club. “Don't you remember what happened to Pete Rose? The former Cincinnati Reds manager was banned for betting on his own team. You're seen as the modern-day Arnold Palmer. You'd risk all that for this? I want no part of it.”
Whether Mickelson placed the bet elsewhere — meant for him and Team USA to win a match the Americans lost by one — is known only by him. It would be my mission if I were Monahan, despite Public Investment Fund governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan as chairman of a creepy sanction, to realize what kind of massive gambling he was doing as he high-fived members at courses the world over. Just as Rose was banned from baseball for life, in a removal that exists 34 years later, Mickelson also should be thrown out of golf forever. We’ll never know unless the commissioner says he’s seriously scrutinizing it. Instead, at this point, Monahan is at the FedEx St. Jude Championship while accompanied by players who would appreciate knowing if Mickelson is the advertised jerk. This is hardly the first time. Maybe it’s the final time, before he’s nailed.
According to Walters, in a book called “Gambler: Secrets from a Life of Risk” by well-known author Armen Keteyian, Mickelson backed up statements last year that his gambling had become “reckless,” “embarrassing” and an “addiction.” He said: “Gambling has been part of my life ever since I can remember. But about a decade ago is when I would say it became reckless. It's embarrassing. I don't like that people know. The fact is I've been dealing with it for some time.” He made those remarks while under a $200 million contract with LIV Golf for a while, and two months ago, he said, “Haven’t gambled in years. Almost a billionaire now. Thanks for asking.” It only made him a bigger ass-clown in golfing settings, as tensions swerved dramatically. But when he stopped gambling isn’t as important as what happened 11 years ago at Medinah? Did he indeed gamble on Team USA?
If so, goodbye. You’re done.
“The only other person I know who surpassed that kind of volume is me," Walters writes in the book.
What else? “Phil liked to gamble as much as anyone I've ever met. Frankly, given Phil's annual income and net worth at the time, I had no problems with his betting,” Walters wrote. “And still don't. He's a big-time gambler, and big-time gamblers make big bets. It's his money to spend how he wants. In all the decades I've worked with partners and beards, Phil had accounts as large as anyone I'd seen. You don't get those accounts without betting millions of dollars.
“Phil Mickelson, one of the most famous people in the world and a man I once considered a friend, refused to tell a simple truth that he shared with the FBI and could have kept me out of prison. I never told him I had inside information about stocks and he knows it. All Phil had to do was publicly say it. He refused.”
To the point Walters feels compelled to blame Mickelson for the death of his daughter, which happened while he was in sentenced to five years in prison. He would have avoided prison, he said, if Mickelson had told the truth. “The outcome cost me my freedom, tens of millions of dollars, and a heartbreak I still struggle with daily. While I was in prison, my daughter committed suicide — I still believe I could have saved her if I’d been on the outside,” Walters wrote.
From 2010 to 2014, Walters writes that Mickelson made 858 bets of $220,000 and 1,115 bets of $110,000. More than every day, wouldn’t you say, if not more? Walters estimates losses of approximately $100 million while betting more than $1 billion in three decades. This is not an “addiction.” This is a weakness that, somehow, didn’t get in the way of his greatest golf, including a 2021 PGA Championship win that made him the oldest winner of a major at 50 years, 11 months and seven days. This year, he finished second at The Masters. He’s around. Until he disappears into LIV Golf and fades off.
There is a weirdness about Mickelson that never goes away. After I lauded him for winning a major at 50, he somehow went nuts on me online as I was heading to Anaheim to see Shohei Ohtani pitch. He said I was the reason the PGA Tour stopped playing in Chicago, which gave me an uncommon link to the sport — rarely did I cover golf in a town that cared about football, baseball, hockey and basketball. Who knew?
The fact we’re hearing about it more than a decade later tells me this is no joke. Bust him, whoever you are. Forever.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.