Today, exactly around 13:30 Spanish time, 15 years ago, I was traveling with Seve to Germany to launch a range of golf clubs and accessories bearing his name alongside Irish brand MD Golf.
Unfortunately, once in Madrid, I had to take him to La Paz Hospital due to the symptoms he was experiencing. I never thought that when I informed the nurse that was attending him in the emergency room, that we needed to catch a flight, she told me that Seve had a brain tumour, and he couldn’t leave the hospital as his life was at risk. I remember that moment as if it happened a minute ago.
It’s heartwarming to see how golf fans still remember him. As evidence; last week Ryder Cup in Italy. A man who truly contributed to changing the course of this tournament to what it is today. A man who transformed European golf. A fighter, a believer. Someone who was authentic, who stood up for what he believed in even if others didn’t like what he said, without practically fearing anyone. He was brave. A man also with great sense of humour. Someone who, coming from humble beginnings, became the king of a sport that was, at that time, only accessible to very few.
The best, not because of the number of tournaments he won but because of how he won and how he influenced the game and golf fans. In those days; no equipment, no universities, no managers. As he used to say, he achieved all he did “a puro huevo” (a Spanish expression I can’t translate directly, but it’s the way he used to explain it). When he was already a super talented young golfer, he was not even allowed to play at the Real Golf de Pedreña, the only golf club in his village at that time. So he went to the beach and played at night.
A man whose last years of life taught me and millions of people what he was made of. They say you really get to know someone in the worst moments, and I did see a man who always gave it all even when the odds were against him. He left us too soon (54), but the weight of his name and legacy will endure over time in the heads and hearts of golf fans.
Amazing that this film is ten years old, nearing mind how scared everyone has become of artificial intelligence just since the launch of Chat GPT last October.
Jeff the robot seems a bit of a smart ass, which is why some of us enjoy outwitting AI. I was lucky enough to be in the first group to do the new AI training at Google HQ in London and was introduced to Bard. I asked it a question and it chugged away a long time and then sent a prompt to reframe the question. Ha! We’re in the early stages of this. The potential is huge, but enjoy getting the better of it while you can.
The most significant part is that it brings to light a money laundering investigation by the IRS.
Walters asked stockbroker Gregory Silvera to do Mickelson a favour.
“Mickelson wanted to transfer several million dollars to Silveira and then have Silveira wire it from his personal bank account to the offshore book to payoff Phil’s gambling losses. Unfortunately for Silveira, he said yes. The wire transfer quickly caught the attention of the criminal division of the IRS.
From the book “With the feds on his heels, Phil told me that his friends at KPMG, his main corporate sponsor at the time, had introduced him to a D.C. attorney named Gregory Craig. He was not just any lawyer; Craig had been chief White House counsel for President Obama. With boyish looks and trademark white tousled hair, Craig had an Ivy League pedigree, having attended Harvard as an undergrad and Yale Law School. Craig also was tight with Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney in the powerful Southern District of New York, former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch, and the director of enforcement at the SEC. Now that’s political juice.
With Mickelson in the midst of a money-laundering investigation and a target of an insider-trading investigation, what did super-lawyer Craig do to get the prosecutors off Phil’s back? He performed a legal trick so improbable that it was like Harry Houdini pulling a rabbit out of a hat while in chains underwater.
On May 19, 2016 – nearly a year before my trial – the SEC issued a press release headlined “Pro Golfer Agrees to Repay Trading Profits.’’ The statement, which was related solely to the Dean Foods case, named Phil as a “relief defendant,” government-speak for people not accused of any wrongdoing but named in complaints for “purposes of recovering alleged ill-gotten gains in their possession from schemes perpetrated by others.”
It went on: “Mickelson neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC’s complaint and agreed to pay full disgorgement of his trading profits totaling $931,738.12 plus interest of $105,291.69.” It also noted that I had “urged” Mickelson to trade in Dean Foods stock and he later sold almost $1 million in profits to pay off part of his gambling debt to me.
“Mickelson will repay the money he made from his trading in Dean Foods because he should not be allowed to profit from Walters’s illegal conduct,” the press release stated.
There was no mention of any money-laundering investigation. Craig chimed in on cue by releasing his own statement claiming that Phil was “an innocent bystander” to any alleged wrongdoing by other people.
Phil and Bharara both got what they wanted. Phil’s attorneys issued a statement that made it look like Phil was an innocent victim of an insider-trading case that implicated me. And in the process, Phil was off the hook on the money-laundering case. The only person who ended up looking guilty was me”
Walters was convicted and sent to prison for five years. Mickelson’s trading in Dean Foods was used as evidence against Walters, but Mickelson did not testify at trial. The golfer’s lawyers informed the prosecution and defense that if called by either side, Mickelson would decline to testify based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
So, the involvement in the insider trading case is new, previously not revealed. The other telling thing is Walters summing up of Mickelson’s character.
This is all a far cry from how most fans have perceived him in the past. Indeed, even the ubiquitous thumbs up gesture may not be the jolly friendly gesture that it seems.
There’s considerable debate about what the gesture actually did mean in Roman times. . A classical source suggests that the default action was to kill the defeated opponent; thus, “thumbs down” would have signified that the losing gladiator was to be spared, and “thumbs up” meant he was to be killed.
Therefore, the thumbs up isn’t necessarily a everything’s great gesture from Phil. No, he’s the smartest guy in the room, and no doubt a scholar of classical antiquity. His thumbs up actually means “you’re going to get killed”. Probably a subtle sign to his opponents on the golf course.
But reading this sad, sorry tale about gambling in the fast lane it does go to his character. There’s a lack of loyalty and going back on his word in order tomprotect his image and public profile.
This is just the latest chapter in a long line of attention seeking dramas that Mickelson gets embroiled in. When he finally leaves professional golf, either to go into US politics or play Baron Hardup in panto over here, it will be awfully quiet.
Now this is out there, and Mickelson personally does not come across well, what drama will be next?
Like a magician, there will be more to come and I think I know what will be happening next.
It was a jaw dropping moment. This time yesterday Phil Mickelson’s biographer Alan Shipnuck released some contents from Billy Walters’ new book Gambler. From one of two chapters about Phil.
It is an obscene amount of money. Walters discloses that Mickelson’s gambling losses were nearer $100 million and over his 30 year career he has bet nearly $1 billion.
More shockingly, during the 2012 Ryder Cup matches he called Billy Walters and said he wanted to lay $400,000 on the United States team, in which he was playing, winning the cup.
Walters, who was Mickelson’s gambling partner and friend from 2008-2013, knew more about the exact amount of money which was involved because they worked in tandem. Walters was so well known in betting circles he had to shadow Mickelson’s gambling patterns so that people assumed that it was him. Mickelson had offshore accounts from which he was betting millions of dollars. In 2011 he placed 3,154 bets and lost $143,000.
It was common for him to bet $100-$200,000 on football, basketball and baseball. For 1,115 times he bet £110,000 to win $100,000 back. On 858 occasions $220,000 to win $200,000 back. The peak of this compulsion seemed to be in 2011 when he was betting nine times a day.
To this Mickelson said today” I have been very open about my gambling addiction. I have previously conveyed my remorse, took responsibility, have gotten help, have been fully committed to therapy..”
Yes, but until Alan Shipnuck’s biography the full extent of this addiction was not made public. And if the Saudi Public Investment Fund had not offered him vast riches to disrupt the professional game, he would still be mired in that debt. He keeps on saying that he is “really happy” but perhaps that is because the hundreds of millions the Saudis paid him to join LIV have now balanced the books and he is now back into the black.
But the most significant issue released so far was his behaviour during the 2012 Ryder Cup matches at Medinah. He and Keegan Bradley had a winning partnership but chose not to play in the afternoon four balls.
Walters discloses that Mickelson called him then and said that he wanted to bet $400,000 on the United States winning the match. Walters said to him:
“Are you fucking mad? People think of you as the new Arnold Palmer. You’d be willing to risk all of that for this bet?”
Mickelson responded “Alright, alright”
He pointed out to him that the Manager of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team Pete Rose, who had been all time scorer and a Baseball Hall of Fame member, was discovered to be laying bets on his teams matches . He was disqualified from the sport for life and kicked out of the Hall of Fame.
Walters doesn’t know if Mickelson placed the bet elsewhere and today Phil has issued a statement that he did not
“I never bet on the Ryder Cup…I would never undermine the integrity of the game’
So he has denied placing the bet. But the book shows that in the phone call he intended to do so. He had the intention, but supposedly got talked out of it.
However, the co-author of the book Armen Keteyian, emmy award winning Chief Investigative reporter for CBS news, found two people, a high ranking golf industry executive and a top poker player friend of Walters who were both told about the bet. The executive recalls that Walters said to him:
“You’re not going to believe what this dumb motherfucker wants me to do. He wants me to bet four hundred thousand on the USA to win. Not on his individual match or anything but the team to win.”
Rory McIlroy gave his reaction today. “Well at least he’ll be able to bet on the Ryder Cup this year, because he won’t be in it”
If the bet had been placed that would have altered tactics and added pressure. It is the intention that matters here.
Not surprisingly, his supporters were as loyal as those of the 45th President of the United States, blindly loyal. “We love you Phil” “I’m Phil’s best friend” and all of that. People do not want to believe that he would ever do anything wrong. He is squeaky clean Mr Thumbs Up. Except he is not.
The next extract from Billy Walters’ book explains a little more about their friendship and the insider dealing trial that led to Walters being sent to prison for five years and being fined $10 million.
” A number of people in the media, on Twitter and in the golf world have suggested that Phil ratted me out on insider trading charges. That is not what happened.
What happened was much worse.
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 that I had inside information about stocks and he knows it. All Phil had to do was publicly say it and he refused.
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.
The book explores how Phil finagled his way out of not one but two cases that ended in criminal convictions. As the book makes clear
Phil is not always the person he seems to be.
On August 23rd, when the book is published we will know more.
So what can be reflected on about this? It seems that both Phil and Tiger have had a multitude of chaos going on in their lives and yet were still able to perform at the very highest level. Perhaps the golf course became a place of safety for them. We know that Mickelson is addicted to risk and adrenaline. Shipnuck describes Phil placing bets inside an armour plated, bullet proof SUB car because he was dealing with some very shady characters in the Russian mafia and Las Vegas underworld.
Some of the golf media have commented that this addiction is a “real illness, a real sickness and very serious”.
Indeed. I wonder whether some of the addictive behaviour from both Mickelson and Tiger could stem from side effects from their extended use of pain killing prescription medication. I will never forget watching the TV series Dopesick and seeing the devastation that addiction to Fentanyl causes. Both Mickelson, with his arthritis, and Woods with his back surgeries have been on very strong medication for some time.
There is a difference between Woods and Mickelson though. When Tiger went through his fall from grace, his mother and children were there to support him when he made a public apology. Mickelson has never publicly apologised in this way, in person. He just writes on social media.
What I and others have noticed is that Phil’s family have been no where to be seen, not since before he unexpectedly won the PGA Championship. And that is bewildering for a man who was so in your face with his family man image. He says he couldn’t be happier. And yet he cuts a figure who is alone, apart from having his brother on the bag. Perhaps he is just happy because he has wreaked havoc and got revenge on the golf establishment and upset the status quo. As well as putting his bank account back into the black.
“He looks great” observed one commentator of his significant weight loss. Really? He looked terrible last year with the stress, and he looks worse this year. Way too thin and looking older than he ever has.
Shipnuck observes that the most damaging part of all this is that it shows up how Phil is as a person, but he says that he will survive it all. He always does. And the bottom line is that all of this publicity is giving Phil the attention he craves. Which is why we always have at least one controversy a year.
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