Phil Mickelson Is Running Out Of Places to Go

In 2022, ESPN sent me to London to cover the first LIV Golf tournament. There were only three members of the American media who made the trip, and LIV still felt like a bit of a mystery. In the months leading up to the league’s debut, Phil Mickelson had created a public relations nightmare for himself when he told journalist Alan Shipnuck that the Saudis were “scary motherfuckers” but that this felt like a once-in-a-lifetime leverage opportunity to use against the PGA Tour. He disappeared from the public eye after those comments were published, and LIV Golf’s debut was the first time he would reemerge and take questions.

The press conference, held at the Centurion Golf Club in Hemel Hempstead, remains one of the most surreal experiences of my career. Mickelson took questions for 30 minutes and repeatedly mentioned that he did not condone human rights violations. His four months away from the game had been “an awesome time.” He spoke in vague generalities, told stories about a family trip to Montana, about the hundreds of hours he’d spent in therapy, and tried to project contrition instead of arrogance. It felt like a once-popular politician trying to move past a scandal of his own making.

"I've said and done a lot of things that I regret," Mickelson said. "I'm sorry for that and sorry for the hurt it caused a lot of people."

LIV Golf’s communications team asked reporters in the room to identify ourselves when we posed a question, and when it was my turn to say my name and my affiliation, Mickelson looked me in the eye and smiled, nodding as I asked my question, as if he hoped to convey a jovial familiarity.

An hour later, I went out to watch Mickelson play a pro-am with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Al-Rumayyan hit a good drive into the fairway and Mickelson called out, “Great shot, Your Excellency!” an anecdote that would appear in numerous summaries about LIV’s debut. But watching Mickelson gush over his new benefactor isn’t what I’ll remember most from that day. As I wandered down the left side of the first hole at Centurion Club, I heard someone call out my name. I turned and watched as two men approached me.

“Hey Kevin, we’re working with Phil Mickelson. He asked us to come and find you,” one of the men said.

I stared blankly at the two of them. I assumed Mickelson was upset about something I had written, so I began trying to catalog in my mind what it might be. Confrontations like this aren’t uncommon in journalism. When you’ve been yelled at by Ray Lewis (as I have), professional golfers don’t seem very intimidating.

“Phil just wanted you to know how much he enjoys your work and how much he respects you,” one of the men said. “He really appreciates how objective you’ve been over the years. He’s a big fan.”

The flattery disarmed me a bit. Mickelson hadn’t just been my favorite golfer growing up, he’d been one of my favorite athletes. I had worked in journalism for more than 20 years, but the kid in me couldn’t resist feeling a flicker of appreciation.

Phil Mickelson knows who I am? He reads my work?

The two men — whose names I’ve long since forgotten — dangled the potential of a one-on-one at some point, and we shook hands and vowed to stay in touch. At some point during the pro-am, Mickelson nodded at me, his quiet acknowledgement that the message had been delivered.

It took me another hour before an uncomfortable truth dawned on me:

He is playing me, just like he’s played people for years. He has no idea who I am, he just thinks I’m the new golf writer for ESPN. He wants to butter me up.

It used to bother me when sportswriters I knew insisted that Mickelson was a phony, that his public persona differed so dramatically from how he behaved in private. I was convinced that no one could play a character with such sincerity for so long. No one could be that manipulative.

It has become clear, in recent years, that I was the fool in this scenario. I don’t take much comfort in the knowledge that there are millions of people like me who were similarly scammed.

By now, you’ve likely read the story in Golf Digest that reports, through multiple sources, that Mickelson was recently kicked out of The Farms, the Rancho Santa Fe, California, country club where he’s played and practiced for years, after an allegation that he made unwanted, non-consensual physical contact with a club employee. The club confronted Mickelson immediately after the alleged incident, in the middle of a round, and he was told to leave the premises immediately. He was not allowed back, and his picture was taken down by the club.

Mickelson, through a spokesperson, called the incident a “misunderstanding that had been cleared up.” His lawyer also stated that Mickelson would hold any publication or individual accountable who shared “speculation or false rumors.”

I’m confident Golf Digest vetted this story carefully with lawyers of its own and fact-checked it repeatedly with multiple sources.

You are welcome to feel however you like about Mickelson. There will be people eager to defend him, people who insist he is being persecuted for his politics or his association with LIV Golf, and Mickelson will likely cling to their cultish devotion. But your feelings do not need to be validated by further evidence or by a court of law. You can go with your gut here. He has shown you who he is for quite some time.

Over the last five years, Mickelson has squandered more goodwill than any athlete since O.J. Simpson. He has taken his reputation as a charming, swashbuckling, endearing daredevil and traded it in for something much more sinister — a 55-year-old man who is clearly scared to grow old, who spends most of his days complaining online, raging against the inevitable realization that there are not many paydays and not many ovations left to comfort him as he drifts through the autumn of his life. The league he helped found, LIV Golf, has failed. The league that made him famous, the PGA Tour, wants nothing to do with him. He is soon to be a man adrift in more ways than one.

Whatever he’s become doesn’t have to taint your memories of his best days on the golf course. I have learned over time that it’s best to try to separate the art from the artist whenever possible. But it’s also okay if you wish to delete them from your fondest golf memories. The 2004 Masters was magical, and the kind of Sunday that helped make me a golf fan. But to quote the great Bob Seger: I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

It’s a sad fate, tossing your Mickelson memories into the dustbin of the past. It’s one that would probably torment the showman in him if he could ever be honest with himself.

But it might also be a fitting one.