What the Hell Happened to Phil Mickelson?

Why did one of the greatest golfers ever 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" — and uncovers a pattern among Trump-era men who just want the juice. • Previously on PTFO: Phil Mickelson, the Pipeline and Trump's (Alleged) 14-Inch Pipe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbmBZR5aoRY • Order Alan Shipnuck's bestselling book "Phil" https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Phil/Alan-Shipnuck/9781476797106 • Pre-order Alan Shipnuck's new book "Rory" https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Rory/Alan-Shipnuck/9781668068809 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 0:14Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 1:18Pablo Torre?

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• 2:03Pablo Torre?

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• 2:25Speaker 01

  How many jokes can we make in one podcast? You and Koppelman set the bar pretty high, but...

• 2:31Pablo Torre?

  It's a lot. It's too much. My mom has informed me it is too much for the record here. But I do need to explain, Alan Shepnoch, thank you for joining us again, by the way.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Delighted to be here.

• 2:41Pablo Torre?

  I gotta 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?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Phil's called me many things through the years, but with Phil, it's all projection. You know, every accusation is a confession. It's a little Trumpian in that regard.

• 3:25Pablo Torre?

  The quote from Phil Mickelson on Twitter, November 22nd, 2023, 5:23 PM Eastern, was, "Alan is the worst liar and a pathetic human."

• 3:36Speaker 01

  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 libelous. He would have had a strong case if everything he believed was true, but it's just, it's just not.

• 3:58Pablo Torre?

  I just need to catch people up to the version of Phil that I have encountered on the internet. The brief speed run through all of this, though, is that Hunter Brook Media, my friend Sam Koppelman, 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 gonna come and save it? Over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom. All of that is part of the sort of brass tacks here. But I... Quote tweet the original article. I say, why do I get the feeling that this is not the end of this story?

• 4:41Pablo Torre?

  And then Phil tweet 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 incinerate wrongdoing, all that stuff. So I respond with an offer to discuss on the show, on Pablo Torre 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 in 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.

• 5:23Pablo Torre?

  I've 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-inch [BLEEP] in front of Newsom'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 Alan.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Phil is a once in a 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's the only guy out here who likes to play in the pro-ams. You know, we all hate the pro-ams, it's six hours and tedious, but Phil, he'll play with, like, a heart surgeon, 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.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  And he's 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.

• 6:37Pablo Torre?

  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. Do here, which is actually answer a couple of questions that I have that I want to pose to you. Because your book, according to New York Times, quote, "is not a drive-by character assassination." Shipnuck generally admires Mickelson and takes note of his philanthropy, his sunny disposition, his deadpan 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.

• 7:21Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  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 is always playing, you know, 5D chess and it blows up on him. He sets himself on fire, but sometimes maybe it works out. We'll see how this whole thing plays out. I mean, I saw you retweeted, Pablo, that now all of a sudden the Trump administration's like,

• 8:23Speaker 01

  "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. Seated on my immediate left. Is Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson, who really needs no introduction, so we're gonna dispense with one. Phil, thanks for being here.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Happy to do it. It's fun to start the year.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  So in 2017, I went to the Madison Club, this very exclusive, private golf club in Palm Springs area, and Phil had this secret lair 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. The fact that 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, it possibly created some sort of stretching or tearing. I'm not a doctor, but am I on the right track there?

• 9:29Speaker 04

  Well, 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. It's probably one of the nicest things you've ever said to me over the years.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And I said, "Why are you not on social media? You would kill because you're funny, you've got a needle." He said, "Because of my personality, I'll go in too deep." He's like, "Once I start, I'll never stop."

• 9:53Speaker 04

  I have 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 dive right down that path and be all in on that.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Amy describing to me as obsessive, and I think he is about a lot of things.

• 10:20Pablo Torre?

  Do you remember the first time you got quality time with Phil Mickelson? When that was, where that was?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  It would have been in 1994. I was an intern at our beloved alma mater, Sports Illustrated, and Phil was the first one.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  At that level, who really understood how to play the game with the media. Like Jack Nicklaus 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, 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 question.

• 10:55Pablo Torre?

  It always worked, Alan. That move has 100% success rate with us sad reporters who are like charmed.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  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. Cause 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 and introduce themselves to an intern? You know, that golf is a little more cloistered and cestuous bee, but nevertheless, like that tells you.

• 11:43Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. That was Phil. So then it's easy to forget now with all the bluster and the bull, you know, who Phil was. And it was particularly dark time for American golf. You know, the best players were Corey Pavin and Marco Mira and Tom Lehman.

• 12:08Pablo Torre?

  I'm falling asleep remembering those names.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. Very boring, very anodyne, charisma free. And Phil arrived and he had aura.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Certainly a good swing. Left of the hole. Good looking.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  That's touch to win the golf tournament. The 20-year-old amateur.

• 12:34Speaker 05

  Phil Mickelson.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  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 an undergrad at Arizona State.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  Phil Mickelson.

• 12:46Speaker 06

  Phil, I really played well, but yeah, the putt on eight was was great. Boy, talk about chills in your spine. That was that was them right there.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  And he had the popped collar and he had the slicked 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.

• 13:23Speaker 05

  What a putt. What a putter. What a performance by Mickelson.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  He would self immolate occasionally, but he was winning tournaments at at a regular clip. And for three or four years, Phil was the golden boy.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  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. He was not really maximizing what he'd been given. And in Tiger's world, that was the ultimate sin.

• 14:01Pablo Torre?

  Look, the whole thing of you getting access to Phil at the house, you getting access 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, the person handling like his public image in lots of different ways. But 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?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  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 tournament press conferences were electric because you never know what he'd say. Can you tell us a little bit about the name Mickelson and whether there was any Scottish heritage to that? I don't know. I don't know.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  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 just like, he's got dead eyes and he, he, his mouth's moving, but he's not really saying anything. And Phil would come in, he was freewheeling and fun and he's giving reporters [BLEEP]. And then it was just the way they played the game. Now, obviously Tiger's was 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. It's more fun to watch, more fun to interview, more fun to watch him interact with the fans.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Uh, he was just a performer and he made the golf be quite lively for, for everybody.

• 15:48Pablo Torre?

  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?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  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 grated on Phil. And again, now we're into this era where,

• 16:43Speaker 01

  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 nineties, 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 did publish it, so it's sort of on me. But the guy's like, oh, I hear the Mickelsons are pregnant, you know, which one, Phil or Amy? You know, it was stuff like that. It was a little sophomoric, 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 grandstand at Medina Country Club, which is this very regal setting in golf, by the way.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And it's, it's Sunday, the PGA Championship, Tiger's gonna win. There's a great feeling in the air, you know, this is Tiger's first major. He really will have won since the, the apocal 97 Masters. And it's all anyone can think about. And you know, Phil, Phil's mad at me about some random line in a mailbag from six 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 six, three 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.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Like, it was, it was just the most idle threat. He knows I'm not gonna throw the first punch. I know he's not gonna throw the first punch because he's this, this, this, uh, guy who has a reputation to protect. So the semantics of it were ridiculous. Like, if he, he should have just said, I think you're a [BLEEP]. Like, that would have been more to the point, but just throw the first punch, 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. And 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 thought I did know him, but I really don't.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  He wasn't wrong. I mean, just so many contradictions and, and so many shadows 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.

• 19:33Pablo Torre?

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• 20:43Pablo Torre?

  I'm always wary of, like, okay, are we psychoanalyzing somebody? But two things are true here. You spoke to hundreds of people for your book, and also Phil Mickelson himself, a psychology major.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's like, you know, his wife Amy is famously beautiful. And talking about their romance, Phil tells me like...

• 21:05Speaker 04

  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 what happens when you're aroused, you know? So what I would do is I would, 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 suspenseful... And she would displace her fear as arousal or attraction for me. And that's how I was able to, you know, when I didn't have as much to work with,

• 21:50Speaker 04

  was able to land such a gem.

• 21:54Pablo Torre?

  I just want to reiterate, quote, "She would displace her fear as arousal or attraction for me." I'm just like...

• 22:03Speaker 01

  It sounds so romantic.

• 22:04Pablo Torre?

  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."

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Everything about Phil is just funny. I mean, until it's not. Like, and then he is, it's gotten, he's gotten edgier and he's gotten more polarizing and, and it's turned, 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.

• 22:30Pablo Torre?

  I mean, look, the whole thing of how much money has Phil made, like, the, the largess 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?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I mean, he was making almost a hundred million dollars a year. Like Tiger was at a hundred twenty, Phil was like in the eighties or nineties. 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 ten million dollars a year and he'd wear the logo and that's cool, you know, you, 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 he would request a binder and he would study it.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  So let's say it's, uh, you know, KPMG or Bearing Point or whatever the company was. They were bringing in forty dudes for a pro-am. Phil would get a dossier on all forty and he'd memorize it. So he'd meet this guy and he'd like, "Hey, oh, 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 shtick. Like, he loved that reaction. And so Phil had all... 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.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And Phil Mickelson making some noise. He's hosting a big golf tournament this week saying that he's gonna have to make some drastic changes because of what's gone on in terms of taxes in California. This is one of his many little scandals, and this is going back 20 years.

• 24:30Speaker 06

  The four-time major champ who rakes 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.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  I think that it was insensitive to talk about publicly to those who, to those people who are not able to find a job, that are struggling paycheck to paycheck.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  This is a funny story. So he complains on national TV about how much he has to pay in taxes. No one's making him live in California. Most of his brethren have moved to Florida, Arizona. He's chosen to be in California because 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 gonna go in and have to face the music 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 dollars complaining about their taxes." And Phil's like, "It's 50."

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I mean, 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. And it's 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 burden 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 costs, 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 thousand pounds.

• 26:13Pablo Torre?

  Anytime your gifts end up sounding like things in a supervillain's lair, you're like, "I think he might have too much money."

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Phil made a lot, but even just 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.

• 26:35Pablo Torre?

  The the accounting, by the way, just to recap it briefly, like what Billy Walters says, you know, citing his two very reliable sources in the betting records that form the foundation of this part of his book. You know, we're talking about losses of approximately $100 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 athlete has ever wagered on sports over the course of a career.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  You know, Phil lost a lot of fans over how he treated his caddy, Jim Mackay, 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. The caddy deserves some, how much, whatever. So this was not an unusual negotiation.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  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 decided to part ways, Phil sends him two checks and it totals 800,000, not 900. Like even so, it just like, it's like his little [BLEEP] 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 gonna sue him in a court of law. So he just had To swallow it. But why didn't Phil pay out? Like, was he really in such a cash crunch?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  He just couldn't pay Bones the money? I mean, it seems fantastical, given how much he was making. But Phil Mickelson made a fortune. How much of it did he hold on to? That is the enduring question.

• 28:46Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  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 gotta talk about Live Golf because it's so fundamental 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 Finchem or Jay Monahan, 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.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  And so that's what he famously told me, you know, why am I negotiating with these scary motherfuckers? Because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour does its business.

• 29:59Pablo Torre?

  In a piece posted on the Fire Pit Collective, the World Golf Hall of Famer told journalist Alan Shipnuck, 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 Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing this, why would-

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I even consider it because this is a once in a 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 to PGA 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.

• 31:04Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 31:15Pablo Torre?

  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?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  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 gonna 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.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  And he kind of white knuckled his way all the way through the process until I was about to hit send. He's like, no, I gotta tell him. I gotta 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.

• 32:34Pablo Torre?

  He could have called, he could have called actual Rick Riley.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, 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,

• 32:52Speaker 01

  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. But 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 on 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 Sing, who's a contemporary of Phil's. And he says, you know, Phil's the ultimate juice guy. He just needs juice in everything he does. The practice round wagers, the crazy shot selection during the tournament.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  And, you know, Sing 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, uh, 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. 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 Sigmund Freud here to figure out what's going on.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Like, the first insider trading case was almost a decade ago. And he skated on that one. 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 a million dollars in quote unquote, ill-gotten 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 is, you know, he, he needed his way out of that. So at that point, I'm probably gonna give up the market. Like, I'm probably not gonna be in shady group chats. Like, I'm just gonna sit on my pile of money and put it somewhere safe. And, but, you know, that's not Phil. He needs the juice.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  So, oh, you've got some, you've got some weird underground oil pipeline. Yeah, bring it on, baby. Let's go.

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• 36:26Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think he 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 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 hellhole, 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 specifics, but loosely, it 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

• 37:26Speaker 01

  outlandish that I'd never heard it before, but the persona kind of curdled in the Live Golf years. And there's, you know, Live was this group of renegades. They were kind of like flying the pirate flag. And they took pride in being iconoclasts and being risk takers and, and kind of breaking up the, this stodgy sport. Because of that, no one wanted to host golf tournaments in 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

• 38:11Speaker 01

  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 Trump has a flexible view on these things. And so there was this nexus between Trump and Live 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 Live was a much more unbridled atmosphere, shall we say. And especially the first couple of years, like, anything goes. The players started speaking more freely about their own

• 38:56Speaker 01

  political beliefs, their own, their own thoughts on current events, world events. 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 DeChambeau 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 almost peer 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.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Once he got to Live Golf and he sussed out the political climate, he just let it rip.

• 39:42Pablo Torre?

  Well, you know, the people I think of when I watch 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 Rodgers 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.

• 40:21Pablo Torre?

  And sometime over the pandemic and certainly 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.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  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, all of that, but.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Billy Walters is a very, very popular guy 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 they both have homes. And people kind of had to take a side. Are you on Billy's side or are 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 is 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 it on the golf course and he did it away from the golf course. He was always able to just finesse it.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  He was just always able to, you know, 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, that joyfulness that Phil exuded, that, that little twinkle in his eye, it just got extinguished and 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.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  And the Elon Musk parallel is interesting.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  You know, Elon blames the woke left for, 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 has been gender fluid. And 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.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  And I think it's political, it's personal, it's part of this larger cultural war on the media. It's, it's everything.

• 43:38Pablo Torre?

  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 find 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?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  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. It would take one quick Google search to figure out who you are.

• 44:21Pablo Torre?

  He also just had responded to me a week before. 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 PM Eastern over the course of the last 13 years. That's totally fine, even though you love sports betting. I'm just wondering, like, do you just not remember that you replied to me a week ago?

• 44:38Speaker 01

  It's just, it's like, it's nonsensical. And this is a funny thing where, long after, 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's going in the book about fact-checking. Like, I think people saw through that as just total BS. But later, subsequently, someone, someone said to him, and this is actually a live tournament in Saudi Arabia. So, he goes back, he's called these guys scary motherfuckers. It's the first time he's going to Saudi Arabia.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  And he's like kissing babies and trying to create all this goodwill and whatever. And then in his press conference, someone says, oh, you know, the interview you did with Alan Shipnuck, blah, blah. He said, I will reiterate, I never did an interview with Alan Shipnuck. I never did an interview with Alan Shipnuck. And mispronounced my last name, you know, I've known for 30 years. And someone very close to Phil said, I'm sure he did that on purpose because he was gonna be like, oh, well, you know, that's how he's gonna game the system is that he didn't say ship Nuck, he said ship Nick. And so that's a different person. And it's 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.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Like, I'm gonna tweet you, but then it doesn't work out. But now I don't know who you are. Like,

• 46:10Pablo Torre?

  I mean, just clearly also, he left, again, the obvious safe shot on the board at you, which was ship [BLEEP]. How did he not go just that direction?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we can go back to recess. I can give you a whole bunch of variations, but yeah, no, he completely whipped.

• 46:29Pablo Torre?

  Ship cuck? I'm just workshopping now. Like, what would I, what would I make fun of you with? He's really just missing some playoffs.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  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, 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 PGA Tour. And you saw that when Jay Monahan, the commissioner, sold them all out and created this backroom deal, 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 PGA Tour. The commissioner role has been so, you know, diminished. And Monahan's retiring and they're not even gonna have a commissioner anymore.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  They're gonna 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 could be vindicated. He could be the hero to every professional golfer because he tripled their salaries. He changed the landscape. He let them run the tour themselves. In fact, the tour had to become, it was a 501(c)(3). It was just a charity organization, a pass-through organization. Now it's a for-profit with a billion and a half dollars of investment.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  So Phil was bang 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 runner-ups. 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.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Like it's just, it's a mixed legacy and it's all of his own making. And the craziest thing about all of this is after he won the PGA 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 Jim Nance. He would have been Ryder Cup captain. He would have been honorary star of the Masters. He would have made 20 to 50 million dollars a year in perpetuity, just doing those things. All the endorsements, all the pro-am's. 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.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 49:43Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yes, he was. He called it.

• 49:54Pablo Torre?

  Called it, dude.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  He's a generational reply guy.

• 50:09Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 50:35Speaker 03

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