The game might never be up for Phil Mickelson, golf’s arch escapologist, who is classed as a legend by some and a pariah by othersJames CorriganMon, December 1, 2025 at 8:59 AM UTC·11 min readAnother insider deal scandal and another brick out of the wall in the ever more inexorable fall from grace of Phil Mickelson. That is the belief of the American’s critics, anyway. Although as ever with the maverick left-hander, who as a golfer has always attempted to marry his propensity for self-immolation with ridiculous recovery, not everything is as seems.
At this point it must be said that Mickelson, 55, is denying the charges that he “tipped off” investors in a chat forum about a controversial oil project off the Santa Barbara coast in California, a few hours north of his sprawling family residence.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFurthermore, Mickelson has enlisted the services of a defamation lawyer to take legal action against those who accused him of leaking insider information about Sable Offshore and an impending $200m investment into the stalled venture. On the group chat he was reported to have sent this message: “Big Daddy Trump ready to swing his 14 inch in front of Newsom’s face will drive up any stock.”
Formerly a democrat, Mickelson now has a Right-wing online personal and is a supporter of Donald Trump - Getty Images/Charles LabergeMickelson, who has tweeted more than 100 times about Sable Offshore, regularly targeting California regulators in protests, insists he made no trades and broke no rules. Hence the action. “While I may have been willing to ‘let it go’ in the past, I’m no longer going to sit quietly and take it when those lines are crossed,” the golfer said.
Inevitably, that “past” has been alluded to, especially to his 2016 involvement in an insider trading case tied to a food company. He ultimately was not charged, but the United States Securities and Exchange Commission did label him a “relief defendant” and he was forced to return over $1m in profits he made in the trades.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFormer friend Billy Walters, the legendary Las Vegas gambler, was sentenced to five years imprisonment and has since claimed that had Mickelson agreed to testify he would not have been sent down.
‘Saudis are scary motherf-----s’
That was when the Mickelson halo started to slip and was referenced in a recent podcast that has gone viral. In “What the Hell Happened to Phil Mickelson?”, Pablo Torre interviews Alan Shipnuck. The former is a journalist facing the prospect of being sued in this oil spill, while the latter is a long-time golf writer who penned Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colourful Superstar.
By the time it was published in 2022, a pre-release of a segment in the book concerning LIV Golf – the Saudi-funded breakaway league that was in the process of launching – had ensured that the Mickelson halo had not just slipped but was now wrapped around his ankles.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“The Saudis are scary motherf-----s to be involved with,” Mickelson told Shipnuck. “They’re scary motherf-----s to get involved with. We know they killed [Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it [joining LIV]? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”
Mickelson’s halo has slipped since joining LIV - Reuters/Paul ChildsThose words were uttered almost exactly four years ago and still the chills still return on reading. Mickelson’s reputation was damaged beyond repair, or so they said, and in this latest podcast, Shipnuck and Torre discuss his broken legacy.
But Shipnuck conceded to Telegraph Sport that with Mickelson, perhaps golf’s arch escapologist alongside Seve Ballesteros, the game might never be up and for that reason it is worth analysing whether he can be classed as pariah or legend, maybe even neither or both.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs far as his profession is concerned, only his most ardent naysayers can deny his standing purely from the achievement perspective. Around the same time as Shipnuck’s sensational tome dropped, so, too, did a work from Sports Illustrated golf correspondent, Bob Harig, which analysed the rivalry between Mickelson and Tiger Woods.
The point made was Mickelson was never classed alongside his nemesis. Yet that should not overshadow his brilliance.
‘He kept pace with Tiger’
“When I was compiling it, what was straight away amazing to me was that although Phil didn’t come within, what, 35 wins [PGA Tour titles] of Tiger, nobody else in that era got close to Phil. I mean, Phil won 45 times, mostly in Tiger’s time,” Harig told Telegraph Sport. “That went underrated for a long time and that’s because it took him so long to win a major. Tiger had eight before Phil had one – and Phil started four years before him.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“But then when he figured it out, he kept pace with Tiger and with that record-breaking victory as a 50-year-old in the [US] PGA in ‘21 has won a major more recently than Tiger. The only major he has not won is the US Open, but he has finished second six times, so must be rated as the most unlucky player not to complete the career grand slam. But still, he was not given credit, even before LIV. Just think he was never voted player of the year, but he’s probably a top-10 player all time. That’s got to affect someone.”
Shipnuck concurs. “He was the can’t-miss kid. He won a PGA Tour title when he was an amateur in college and on becoming a pro, knocked them off at a fair clip. But then everything changed for him. Tiger came along. And he went from being the headliner to an act some way lower down on the bill.”
Mickelson was top of the bill before Tiger Woods arrived on the scene and changed everything - Getty Images/Harry HowHarig points out that Mickelson has always credited Woods for making him work harder and at least being able to narrow the chasm (although Woods’s litany of injuries must also be considered a huge factor). Yet there was one area in which he could approach the undisputed No 1 – in their earning powers.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“Tiger was earning say $120m a year, but Phil got to $80-90m,” Shipnuck said. “He had some blue-chip financial companies and was great with clients. But he had a big burn factor, whether that be through all gambling or the skeleton head of a T-Rex that [wife] Amy bought him, or a meteor she also gave him as a birthday present. In his book Billy Waters claimed that Phil lost hundreds of millions in gambling. He could have sat on his haul and became richer and richer, but didn’t, because Phil does not do things the easy way.
“There’s a story about his PR manager and some of the Tour’s media staff, trying to get him to put out a [media] fire after criticising the taxes in California. They told him, ‘look, Phil, people struggling with money don’t want to hear about a guy earning $40m a year complaining about the money in his pocket’. Phil thought about it and said ‘it’s $50m a year’.”
Mickelson is extraordinarily generous. Last month, former Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar revealed that, as he awaited a liver transplant, Mickelson anonymously donated $20,000 to his GoFundMe. It was also unknown that, at the same time, Mickelson donated $7,000 to help pay for the funeral costs of the donor, 21-year-old Bryce Dunlap who died from a brain injury. “There are loads of stories like that about Phil,” Harig said. “He’s not doing stuff like that for publicity.”
Many might find it difficult to equate that individual, with the superstar being charged with blowing up the professional golfing landscape and there can be no doubt that his influence was crucial in the formation of LIV. Sources say he was offered $200m to sign and helped draw up the LIV blueprint.
According to sources Mickelson was offered $200m to sign to LIV - PA/Steven PastonYet as his statement to Shipnuck suggests, he was not at all certain to jump and saw the potential leverage in his long-running dispute with the PGA Tour. For at least a decade he had repeatedly knocked on the commissioner’s door – first Tim Finchem and then Jay Monahan – to argue that the game’s big names were being underpaid. His fraternisations with LIV secured him a Tour ban, even before a ball had been hit in the upstart league, and at that point it was war.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAll these years on and the irony is that Mickelson has been proven right – Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and the other Tour behemoths are playing for cheques three times what they were until the Saudi tanks turned up on the country club lawns shooting their petro-dollars at the clubhouse.
That must improve Mickelson’s image, but his problem is that, other than in the majors, for the overwhelming majority he is out of sight and out of mind. LIV attracts miniscule viewing figures in comparison to the Tour and although he is playing well enough – indeed, remarkably so for a competitor of his age – the spotlight has nothing like the glare he commanded before. Personal experience says he remains the individual they head to see – alongside that fellow freak show exhibit, Bryson DeChambeau – but even at LIV there is the occasional heckle from the galleries.
Outside the ropes, Mickelson has become prolific on X, where his followers have witnessed a drastic change in his politics. Formerly a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama and was in no way supportive of President Trump in his first term, Mickelson has flip-flopped. A quick glance at his timeline will emphasise his new online persona of golf’s very own Elon Musk.
“History has proven that the only thing that can stop a person with a gun, is another person with a gun…”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“Being an American is a privilege, NOT A RIGHT. This is not immigration, it’s an INVASION.”
These were two offerings from last week. Mickelson has emerged as a hero of the right and is plainly revelling in the role. He has long threatened to move to Florida where he would pay far less tax, but as Shipnuck says, “he loves the juice”.
“That’s why he loves the gambling, the insider deals, having a bet in pro-ams, taking on those miracle shots,” Shipnuck said. “He just loves the juice, loves to be the smartest person in the room and that’s why I think he rang me. He just could not resist showing how clever he was. He was playing both sides of the street, the Saudis, the Tour. And he needed to let that be known.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“He’ll never live those quotes down. And now you get into this late period, Phil, over the last decade where he’s being investigated by the SEC and he’s become this Right-wing internet troll. It’s a mixed legacy and it’s all of his own making.”
There is a way back, but Mickelson is not in control. He received a generational fortune from LIV and is their employee and that means obeying whichever direction the Saudis wish to take. But in many respects, Mickelson’s legacy needs peace to break out.
Only if the tours reconcile can Mickelson’s reputation be repaired - Reuters/Mike Segar“The only way for Phil to salvage his reputation is if the PGA Tour and LIV somehow come to an agreement to reunify the sport,” Shipnuck said. “Then Mickelson can claim victory as an agent of change who tripled his peers’ earnings, gave them much more of a voice in their governance and forced the PGA Tour to improve its product.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“But, given that a rapprochement between LIV and the Tour now seems highly unlikely, Mickelson is destined to be remembered as a greedy, duplicitous schemer who broke professional golf.”
Whichever side of the fence you sit on, that would be a sad conclusion to a career that brought so much joy to so many people. Does Mickelson care, has his ego been hurt?
“Of course Phil’s ego has suffered,” Shipnuck said. “For most of his career he was adored and now he is reviled. He was going to be a Ryder Cup captain, the voice of golf sitting in the 18th hole tower next to Jim Nantz [the NBC commentator] and, eventually, an honorary starter at the Masters. With his endorsements he would have been clearing $40m a year easy – and would have still been cherished.
“All of that is gone now, and he’s playing out the string as a non-factor in a B-list league. That has to hurt for a consummate showman. And yet I doubt Phil has any regrets. That’s not how he’s wired. In his mind, LIV has been a smashing success and any day now people will realise what a genius he is. And that is the great and tragic paradox of Phil Mickelson.”
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