'It's a pretty big fall': How everything changed for Phil Mickelson in just one year
Try to imagine, as you watched the final moments of the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island's Ocean Course last year, how you would feel if someone had told you -- in that moment -- Phil Mickelson was on a path to become the most divisive figure in professional golf.
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It would be unfair to classify Mickelson a pariah. He still has a legion of fans and a core group of peers who believe he has been singled out for an avalanche of criticism and framed as a scapegoat by a tour that is facing the existential threat of a rival golf league.
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He argued with random users about Jon Rahm's vaccination status; he attacked an investigative reporter from the Detroit News for writing an accurate, if unflattering, story about how a mob-connected bookie had refused to pay Mickelson a $500,000 gambling debt; he suggested his excessive coffee-drinking habit had protected him from catching COVID; he attacked the USGA for rule changes limiting the length of drivers to 46 inches; he criticized the PGA Tour policy board's ban on green-reading books; he claimed that the PGA Tour was holding on to $10-20 billion in "digital moments" that top pros had created; he thanked Elon Musk for grumbling about his $11 billion tax bill; he asked why we couldn't try achieving herd immunity with the omicron variant; he announced (incorrectly) that he'd won the $8 million first-place prize in the PGA Tour's Player Impact Program; he claimed he was considering leaving the PGA Tour because of its "obnoxious greed"; he chimed in to agree when Hoffman claimed an unfair ruling at the Waste Management Phoenix Open was an example of why players were considering other tours. All this occurred before the release of his interview with biographer Alan Shipnuck in which Mickelson implied he was playing LIV Golf and the tour against one another.
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Mickelson's loyal fans have forgiven him for mistakes in the past. They barely shrugged in 2015, when a California man was sentenced to prison for money laundering. The man, allegedly acting as a conduit for an offshore gambling operation, laundered approximately $2.75 million of money that belonged to Mickelson, who wasn't charged in the case. The next year, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Mickelson made $931,000 by purchasing stock on an insider trading tip from sports gambler Billy Walters (Mickelson wasn't criminally charged but agreed to pay back more than $1 million in "ill-gotten gains" ). The federal government alleged that Mickelson used some of the money he made to pay Walters for gambling debts. Mickelson's fans forgave him again after he intentionally hit a moving ball on the slick 13th green at Shinnecock in the third round of the 2018 U.S. Open.
https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/33916213/pretty-big-fall-how-everything-changed-phil-mickelson-just-one-year
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