Uncovering Phil Mickelson's Misconduct Allegations, with Alan Shipnuck

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is It's a nude selfie. He's fully erect. He's flexing a bicep which is to me is the best part of the whole image right after this How's it going? We meet again. I know the field beat is Action packed. It never stops Getting darker, weirder, juicier, more journalistically Challenging in some ways. I would venture to say. Yeah, that sounds right. Has there been any update on the Sable Offshord? How's that permit going? We are talking on Tuesday and I just checked the Sable Offshore stock price It's sunk 40% this morning On a $1.2 billion capital raised plan this after the president of the United States sort of came over the top to say drill baby drill Uh, not exactly the greatest month for a Phil Mikkelson. I think the president saying we should drill more. Won't that help them? Well, Alan, I don't know if you know this, but the key to America's greatness lies in an offshore oil pipeline Near Santa Barbara, California. This is how we're going to get out of this Quagmire involving the Middle East. Maybe you've heard of Some things going on over there They're still going to bring a piece to the Middle East with this offshore pipeline Because we can pull up stakes and be like all right, never mind. We don't need we don't need the Iran. We're good We got this. Oh boy. We got this all under control You So something extremely strange has been happening with Phil Mikkelson I made a lot of other strange things that were already happening with Phil Mikkelson Like the impending collapse of the Saudi-backed live tour which we previously covered with our guest today Alan Shepnuck on this show or the thing with stable offshore the publicly traded oil company that we'll get back to later Or the time Phil tweeted me back in November quote I've never heard of you and have no idea who you are But given what I know to be true and what you report your tabloid and I'll wait for the right opportunity Thumbs up emoji End quote But we here at Pablo Torre finds out continue to wait Because Phil Mikkelson the second greatest golfer of his generation right next to Tiger Woods a wildly popular folk hero family man by reputation basically disappeared He missed the first four events on the live golf schedule and he was citing a Family health situation which seems valid you know one of his kids has had some serious health issues and then In mid-March, he made his debut at lib south africa Which is not just right around the corner from his his home in San Diego And I talked to him some live golfers and and they said Phil was fired up He seemed he was ready to play and he was excited and he was talking about the season to come And then after that he went underground again and he missed the masters He missed the pg championship and he kept citing the family health situation Although clearly it was okay for him to go to south africa So that that was part of the mystery as as live golf is fighting for its survival You know fills its biggest star. He's the most accomplished player He's really the godfather of live golf. He helped found the whole thing and for him to be underground was stunning But even more conspicuous Phil Nicholson also went dark on Twitter Where he had transformed into one of the most prolific posters and all the sports Which leads us now back to Alan shipnuck The guy who literally wrote the book on fill and has now cracked this story wide open for the outlet scratch golf Starting with a rumor that we had both heard back in the spring About a place called the farms Which I want to start with here because I need people to understand what the farms is and what this incident was I had been making calls about that in May and then Golf digest got to it which brings us to everything else that you found out But can you just set the table for us? What happened at the farms? So the farms is an interesting place. It's in Rancho Santa Fe You know the golf equipment industry is is anchored in Karlsbad, which is nearby And there's a lot of great players out of the farms. There's a lot of dudes who are in the equipment industry It's not super fancy It's really a place where serious golfers go to play golf and There are other clubs where there's a lot of drinking there's a lot of corousing That's never really been the vibe at the farms and You know feel like to go there because there were a lot of good players and he could test himself and it was a good competition and so It's a little unlikely that this whole thing would happen at the farms But there was there was a woman who who worked there By all counts as young attractive and Phil was playing with some guys and Something happened. I've heard different versions of it I've been actually trying to get the documents from the San Diego Sheriff. They've been slow playing me for weeks It's been very tedious dealing with them But he had some interaction with this young woman he touched her in some way She complained immediately to the general manager and the management of the place They went out and confronted Phil and they asked him to leave the property They did an investigation and Phil wound up losing his membership there And this is not not welcome on the property anymore and the term that the golf site issues was non-consensual inappropriate physical contact So that that happened in mid-March Everyone heard about it because it was during the day. There was other members there and it went around instantly I mean not my phone started ringing probably three days after it happened and sounds like yours did too And I reached out to the general manager. He never got back to me But I was I was pursuing it, but if I'm honest I probably wasn't chasing as hard as I should have because I have this long history with Phil I wrote this book about him and I knew that if I broke this with only anonymous sources and that was the way it was going because every member Said we've been told not talk about it. There's there's been law enforcement involved I can't say anything that if I drop this story with only anonymous sources feel it attack me and say I've invented data against him and That was in the back of my mind probably to my discredit, but golf digest then broke the story and They had only anonymous sources, but they don't have this this this long tangled history that like I do with Michelson so That kind of cracked things open and I'd already been talking to a lot of people. I've been hearing more things And after that story dropped some folks call me back So people became a little more willing to talk and I was getting more tips and I was I was able to to chase the story harder and so In some ways I guess it was probably helpful that it was digest that was able to crack the code on the farms I mean just the visual that was reported in which Phil Michelson is being stopped by club officials mid-round Confronted with the accusation on the course is told to leave the premises Before completing the round for people who don't know the farms. This is Local to him right he grew up Not far from there. He is Phil bleeping Michelson like it's a thing that does not often happen to men of his stature with that sort of a bond with the Surrounding area. Yeah, I mean fills the king of San Diego. He's bored and raised there He's always lived there in a retro Santa Fe is this very exclusive sort of on-clave just just a little north of the city But his for all types of purposes is San Diego He's a member at every club in town you go down the list like Phil plays them all and he's the guy who likes to play golf seven days a week I mean it's part of why he's had this Unparalleled longevity He's just obsessed with golf. He loves to play. He loves the action. He loves to hang. He loves the bros and so I mean Phil will play golf every day of the week somewhere in the San Diego area And so if you're a golfer in San Diego at a private club you've had some interaction with Phil He's just a larger than life character down there And so when the farms ultimately issues the statement to golf digest as we're setting up The pretext for what you reported It's a thunderbolt because what the farms golf club says is quote They are committed to maintaining a golf club environment that is safe respectful and reflects the highest standards of conduct All members are required to adhere to our code of conduct and any allegations of misconduct are taken seriously Following a staff member report of member misconduct the club provided immediate and ongoing support to the staff member Conducted a thorough independent investigation of the incident and took decisive action this individual This being Phil Michelson is what is unsaid is no longer a member of the farms golf club And post publication a spokesperson for Phil confirmed that he had resigned which is the language that You know there is some interpretation there right of who asked who who told to do what but he is no longer a member. And what that does, Alan, in terms of your cell phone, just to give us the overview, how many people do you end up talking to once that seal is broken in the course of reporting what you did in your follow-up for scratch? I had 19 sources and that's not counting Dustin Johnson and Mark Brooks and other players who I interviewed were named in the story but people who had direct information about Phil's misconduct. And that also doesn't count to the lawyer of the alleged victim at the farms who I reached out to because of course there's been a lot of rumors that the reason there were no charges filed was because of some sort of settlement. She did employ a lawyer but he refused to answer any of my questions. But I finished my book then in 2021 and Phil's on top of the golf world. He'd won the PGA championship, this incredible victory lap, oldest man ever to win a major championship. It was presumed he was going to be a writer cup captain and he was going to probably wind up in the CBS tower and he was going to be this massive figure in the game for the foreseeable future. And so some of the things are in my scratch story I knew about when I was doing the book but people would not talk to me. They would only talk to me off the record. I could not use it. They were just afraid of the blowback and that was disappointing but I also understood. And then after the book came out I started to hear more stories. These other places beyond the farms where Phil had gotten in some mischief. He wound up leaving the club. So I'd heard about it. I could never quite nail it down. And so there was just this sense not just from me but from everyone else that Phil is always going to get away with it. And it was pointless to come out against him or to put your name on an accusation because somehow he will get away with it. And the farm story comes out and I think that was the signal to a lot of people in the golf world like okay maybe now is the time. I've been carrying this stuff around for a long time and I have things I want to say about Phil that I've never said but maybe this is the moment and that's when people started talking to me. You can sense when there's something that people are not saying when there is something especially that lots of people are not saying because they often only want to talk like extremely off the record. But the inflection point which is what we're describing for Phil Michelson right now. I mean it comes amid this larger now increasingly I think answerable mystery. Like where the fuck did he go? Because he was the most active person that I was following on Twitter. Tweeting relentlessly about offshore oil drilling. He was getting increasingly political. There was that stuff. Huge trump guy. All of that was happening. Then the live golf season comes. The U.S. Open in Shinnokok. That comes and goes. He's not there. The VGA championship. His name appears and then it disappears. Now as you begin to piece all this together it gives us a portrait of a guy who was one thing in public and now is extraordinarily different. Yeah I mean it's important to remember that Phil was this paragon of family values. That was a huge part of his brand. You go back to the 1999 U.S. Open. Amy is nine months pregnant in California. Phil's in North Carolina at Pinehurst playing. And if Amy goes into labor Phil's going to walk off the course no matter what. And so that becomes an inescapable part of this drama. Paints to her. It makes that iconic putt. Pain stored is the 1999 U.S. Open champion. Oh my. What a clutch. If you had made that putt they would have gone to play off the next day. Amy had the baby the next morning. So Phil got home in time for that. And then in 2003 Amy almost dies in childbirth. Same with their son Evan. You know he didn't take a breath for 12 minutes with modern medicine is a miracle that he came out okay. And Phil rededicates himself says he's going to give up all the gambling. He makes his covenant to be a better man, better husband goes on to win his first masters. And that becomes part of the story. 2010 masters. You know Amy and Phil's mother Mary both have breast cancer and Phil wins the masters for them. People have been wondering all this year during Tigers absence. Why wasn't Phil out there winning tournaments and no one ever really put the obvious together. The things back home were unsettled with Amy's recent treatments. It's been difficult. She's doing well but it has been extremely tough. She's been in bed here in Augusta all week coming out today for the first time now to close with a birdie. That's a one for the family. Amy hadn't been seen in public in a very long time. She's behind the green for this hug. The whole sports world cries along with them. And the context of that 2010 masters is the contrast with Tiger. That Tiger Woods is coming back post sex scandal and there is Phil as this relative angel to the other you know all time golfer on your shoulder. Yeah. And they've always been rivals and foils and frenemies and so yeah that was that was a start contrast. That masters was this morality play at Augusta National. So it's not just that Phil has lost his way. It's that this beloved figure and it was a huge part of his brand was the loving husband and the doding father. So that's why this fall from Grace is extra stunning. And it's also why it's carried so far because the one thing that people don't like is to be lied to. I think America has proven many times that it's forgiving and if you make a mistake and you take ownership of it you will get a second or a third chance. But people don't want to be bamboozled. The family values branding was so lucrative also to just be very blunt about it. I mean 2013 as you point out his endorsement incomes 44 million dollars is one of the highest paid athletes in the world when you add in all the winnings on top of that. And meanwhile throughout this long arc that you're tracing there were clues that people were sort of leaving which said this is not the guy you think he is. And I want to play this sound. This is a friend that Phil Michelson had known since they were both kids named Pat Perez, a fellow tour pro who went on Claude Harmon's podcast. This is November 2022. And he said this. When it comes to Phil, I have a different hate for Phil than most people. And people won't know the story. I'm not going to go into the story again, but Phil crossed the line with me that is just uncrossable and unforgivable. And he knows that he screwed up. He apologized for the action, but it doesn't. I cannot forgive him for it because I've known Phil for a long, long time. I've known the guy. And so Alan to explain what is not being said there that you have now reported that you broke the news on what happened in that incident that Pat Perez is referring to. Yes. And even a little more context. So a lot of people pinpointed sort of the mid 2000 in teens as that's when Phil lost his way. 2013 was when he won the Open Championship at Mirafield. It was probably his greatest victory as he's called it. And after that, it was kind of a victory lap. And the winds started to dwindle. He's into his mid 40s. Amy had beaten breast cancer, but was traveling a lot less to safeguard her health. And also to take care of the three kids who are now teens, you know, live in their lives. And so someone extremely close to Phil in that period said, you know, that you started drinking a lot more on the road. And he'd always been devoted to Amy, but that started to change. And so maybe the family man was a real thing for when he was selling that image. But somewhere along the way Phil lost his focus. He became fixated on Pat Perez as well. Ashley, when she started dating Pat, she's only 22. She was young and kind of innocent. She was new to golf, new to the lifestyle, all of it. And so people who'd been very close from that period said, Phil talked about Ashley Perez a lot. And so at the 2015 Barclays tournament in New Jersey, Phil was a member at Liberty National. It was, you know, this very swank club right in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. And he's staying at this big villa. I think it has four bedrooms. And he calls Ashley, not Pat and says, Hey, why don't you guys move into this villa? I've got plenty of space. And so they're great. You know, they're just some mediocre Marriott by the Newark airport. And so they stay up their first night, you know, Phil loves his red wine. So they're sitting out on the patio and they're drinking wine. You know, passes a drink, three bottles of wine. And at some point, Pat gets up to use the restroom and Phil pulls out his phone and he shows a picture to Ashley. It's a nude selfie. He's fully erect. He's flexing a bicep, which to me is the best part of the whole image. And he says, I'm going to leave my bedroom door open tonight when Pat falls asleep. I want you to come visit me and Pat comes back to the table, no acknowledgement of what happened, you know, actually so stunned, she doesn't say anything. And that is what Pat is referring to. And he had carried that around for a long time. I mean, that podcast with Claude Harmon is seven years later, right? So after that podcast goes viral, Phil calls Pat again to talk about this situation. And they have this 26 minute phone call that Ashley recorded. It's on speaker phone and Ashley just made a recording of it. She played it for me and it's a fascinating document. And basically throughout Phil says, I don't remember anything from that night. We had all that wine and so that's kind of, that's his stance. And yet, he's also apologizing profusely throughout. So he's kind of working both sides of the street. I don't remember it, but if anything happened, I'm sorry for it. And I didn't put this in the scratch story. He says, why didn't you say anything back then, you know, if this did happen and Pat Perez says, well, it would just devolve into a, he said, she said, and you're the big fish. And so you would win that battle. And so that gives you some insight into Pat's thinking and how these things just kind of went away. But clearly, Pat still had a lot of anger towards Phil and it exploded in that podcast and that, that helped make this story what it is because that lays the groundwork. But you can tell it doesn't really believe that Phil doesn't remember, but what you can do with that. And that phone call is, is fascinating. How did you get in touch with Ashley Perez, who plays you this tape in which you get to hear this private conversation that attests to the dynamic that you're reporting? So I did a big story on Pat Perez years and years ago. And I went to the family home, Ashley cooked us pork chops and we had a long dinner. They liked the story. That story kind of captured their unusual dynamic and Pat's sort of rebellious pose on the PGA tour. And so Ashley later told me she's always had a high opinion of me as a reporter going back to that piece. And so I had her phone number from those days and I just, I just reached out to her. And again, she was, she was finally ready to talk, you know, her and Pat were divorced and he was finalized in 24. So she'd kind of exited the golf world. She didn't no longer felt beholden to carry the secret. And I think she would have been ready to talk for a while and someone finally reached out to her. And it was interesting because I talked to many rich and or powerful men for this story. Players at these private clubs, golf buddies with Phil and they all had very harsh critiques of Phil and his behavior. But in the end, they didn't want me to use their names. They were trying to protect their businesses or their social standing. They don't want to get it any side eye at the golf club. Ashley Perez had the courage to put her name on it and to come out publicly. And that was a big deal because as I said at the top, I just didn't want to have a story of nothing but anonymous sources because we know that we're in an era now where people love to attack reporters. They love to try and deflect. And I felt like it was really important to have a face to this story and it turned out to be Ashley. And so there was another woman who I had been speaking to, part of, you know, Phil's inner circle at one point that during a binner, Phil had aggressively propositioned her allegedly and used incredibly graphic language. And she had told me that story off the record. She was going to decide if she wanted me to use it or not. Ashley too, she had to decide if she wanted to use her name and we had a lot of conversations about it. And she finally said, yes, that allowed me to go back to this other woman and say, well, I'm going to tell Ashley's story. She's named. She said, okay, you can use my story too. You know, no one wanted to be the first person to jump into the pool to test the water. She's actually said, yes, I was able to get this, this other person, there was other folks at that dinner. I call them. They corroborated it. I mean, it's solid, but it was an important thing for this other source to know that there was going to be a name person in the story. Like you need someone to have the courage to actually say it. The end of June, and July can be a really rough period for sports fans with football still a few months away and basketball and hockey ended. But this year, we're pretty lucky because not only is there a World Cup, there is a World Cup in our backyard. And so make sure to check out the athletic podcast network. Just stay up to date on all things related to the World Cup. You can wake up with the totally football show from LA, then dive deep into the biggest talking point of the day with the athletic FC podcast, and you can watch the TFO podcast fool around on their daily live streams in the afternoon. All shows are free to watch or listen on your favorite podcast platform. What Ashley says to you is, quote, there is a culture of silence that keeps women from coming forward. I want to give other women the courage to share their truth. With Phil, I feel like the pattern has been there for many years, so people have been afraid to go public because it's Phil Mikkelson. We give these golfers so much adulation and money, they think they're gods. They think they're untouchable. Being a pro athlete doesn't exempt you from behaving respectfully in society. With Phil, you're dealing with an egotistical narcissist. And so that is Ashley Perez with her own name attached, going on the record, saying the thing that ends up developing this portrait of a person who, by the way, through his legal representation, had something to say to you, Alan, which we should cite here because it's interesting. Quote, some of the allegations circulating about Mr. Mikkelson are false and others revisit mistakes he's already acknowledged publicly or privately, stacking the disputed claims next to the ones he has owned does not make them credible. It instead contributes to a false and misleading narrative. No person, no article, and no book can present an accurate, complete or personal story of the life Mr. Mikkelson and his family have lived, his story struggles in recovery, belonged to him, and to the people who have shared it closely alongside him. Recovery is not a straight line. Throughout their 35-year relationship, his wife, Amy Mikkelson, has supported Mr. Mikkelson and their family with extraordinary grace, unwavering love, and the belief that people are measured not only by their failures, but by what they do to make them right. Mr. Mikkelson's priority is to become the husband, father, and man his family deserves. Right now, that means giving his full attention to a private family health matter, he understands that parts of his life are public, but his family's private matters are not end quote. And just to translate that a bit, you do see the commingling of various things swirling in Phil's life, which are again worthy of consideration. That family health matter, of course, let us take that at face value, as has been presented to you and other journalists and the golf world. And then also you see the nonspecific denials of what we're outlining here. Yeah, I like the little jab in there about no book, Canack Erly Canack. No book. No book. No book. That seems a little gratuitous, but I enjoyed it. So yeah, I don't take issue with all of it. I mean, I have a lot of empathy for Amy and for the Mikkelson kids is no doubt an incredibly difficult time. People are allowed to make mistakes and hopefully transcend them. The real issue, and I already knew this, but reading the Twitter replies has been a little dispearating. There's been a lot of love out there for people still doing journalism, which I know you get when you do these big cases as well, and that's a grand of flying. But there's been a whole strain of like, he's a rich athlete. Of course, he's chasing girls. What's the big deal? Like that's been a very common sentiment. I don't want to be the morality police in that regard. But it's really the non-consensual nature of what's happening here. Yes. Yes. We've talked about the farms. This thing with Ashley Perez was very non-consensual. But this dinner party that I heard. Just the dinner party, right? I do want to just provide some of the context in your reporting here. Let's get into that. Phil is drunk allegedly and graphically propositioning a woman at this dinner, and she says, I will quote the reporting, something felt off. He was behaving a little odd out of nowhere, Phil started asking the most inappropriate questions about my personal life and then propositioning me in graphic detail. He went on and on about how he'd been fantasizing about me and all the things he wanted to do to me. It was incredibly awkward. The rest of us kept trying to change the subject, but he was relentless. The more wine he drank, the louder he got. There was a family at the table next to us and I have no idea what they heard. It was horrible. I was sweating profusely. It felt like verbal rape. End quote. And then you cite the two other members of the dinner party who corroborate that lurid language, that behavior. But this is to say, there is allegedly a non-consensual dynamic that keeps popping up in the reporting as well as this contrast with the public image, which is that of somebody who it turns out was flying quite close to the sun in terms of thinking he would never have to answer questions about any of this. So many people that I called for this story said something to the effect of, you know, someone has to stop this person. This behavior will just continue. And then Ashley Perez had her own incident at a dinner with Phil. And she said, you know, he was using incredibly graphic language. He was using two fingers to demonstrate his techniques. She's like, and we were at this nice restaurant with a bunch of people. It was like, it was wildly inappropriate. And the phone call with Phil also acknowledged that you listened to that Ashley played for you. That it also acknowledged that first incident, which predated the photo of Phil and the erection and the bicep. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I was talking about that dinner and he says, I didn't really have a problem with it. He's like, what coach did and coaches Phil's long time agents, Steve Lloyd, who I reached out to you for comment, who didn't respond. And so how many times has this happened? It's not appropriate. It's not what it's not acceptable. That was just a strain that kept coming up over and over is somebody has to stop this. It just, it's just this long standing pattern behavior. You know what? You know, Ashley Perez, both a dinner party and the photograph, that was 2015. What happened in the farm is 2026. This is something that's happened repeatedly now. And so that's why it felt like a story that had to be told. And look, my understanding, despite not having any association with these golf clubs, not being nearly as well sourced as you are at places like this, the dream is to have a Phil Michelson around. You'd advertise that you put his photo on the wall. That's kind of the point. Look who's hanging out here. And yet in your reporting, you keep on tallying up these instances of these exclusive golf clubs, effectively realizing Phil Michelson can no longer be a member here. And in the first story you told at the Farms, there was the management of the club coming to a mid-round saying as much effectively. But in these other stories that I want to take us now to the Madison Golf Club first, it's also Phil's family intervening. It sounds like. So the Madison Club is this enclave out in Palm Springs, Desert. Was probably the most exclusive prestigious golf club in that whole area. Quarter million dollars to join at least this glittering membership. And it's a really fun place. So I went and actually did a podcast with Phil in 2017. I met him at the Madison Club and he was holding court in the bar and there was 20 dudes hang on every word and it's known as a good time. We were in Lakinta in your condo at the Madison Club, which seems like a pretty fun place to hang out. What kind of hang is this place? It's the best hang. It's the best modern day golf experience from the food to the pristine practice facilities to the golf course. It's really a fun place to come spend time. It's a lot of drinking, it's a lot of gambling. It's just a fun place to be a member and Phil had this bachelor pad. That was the vibe anyway that was up in the clubhouse, you know, dark leather furniture. Every wall was covered with photos from his career, tons of golf equipment and he would spend December and January kind of tuning up for the PJ Tour season because the weather was perfect out there that time of year. He'd spend a lot of time in March there getting ready for the Masters. And I talked to members, I talked to employees, they said they almost never saw Amy there. She would bring the kids, they would go to the Coachella Music Festival and they would stay there. But that was pretty much the only time they ever saw Amy on the property. And so every person I talked to associated with the club, the members, the employees said at some point Phil started having overnight guests in this little condo he had, Amy was not on the property and Phil would go out to play golf and he would have breakfast delivered to the front door funny enough, they remembered the order, it was a veggie omelette and an almond milk latte and he'd go out and play. The food would be delivered to whomever was still staying and that's how everyone described it. And so at some point the club management gets a phone call from you know the Michelson's wealth management firm and they say they want the condo sold and the membership terminated and feels no longer you know going to be a member of the mass and club and this all happens very hastily and never says goodbye you know people there loved him he including the employees and it was just like Phil was just overnight he was gone. So then he starts consolidating a lot of his golf at the bridges you know that was in his backyard essentially in Rancho Santa Fe where the family home was and they've been members there for a long time he paid his monthly dues and he used the club a lot and the family would go there for Thanksgiving dinner and he was a very regular presence at the bridges you know talking to multiple multiple members they said you know all of a sudden things were just different he became close with a with a guy owned a big house on the course and he was he was going over that house a lot and then this members said you know you would feel it give his his phone to this card boy paying $500 to drive his phone around for three or four hours so it would look like if anyone were to track his phone oh he's on the third hole he's on the sixth hole he's on the seventh hole and that would give Phil some unshaperone free time and so that that thing about the phone was corroborated by all the members one told me it wasn't just the card boys like you know if you just put it in a member's cart and say hey I'm going to leave my phone here I'll catch up you on the back nine and you a couple couple hours later he zoom out there and play a little golf and grab his phone so I need a stop for a second and just understand the the plan you're cause this rumor by the way is also something that I had heard way more abstractly that like hey you ever heard the story about how Phil Michelson basically hides what he's doing from his wife at one of the golf clubs he belongs to by giving his phone to a cart boy to just like drive around so the GPS tracker that presumably Amy Michelson could check was showing a guy on the course as opposed to a guy not on the course perhaps allegedly doing things that his wife would not want effectively conscripting all of these people to keep to not only keep it to create the secret thinking none of this will come back to bite me at some point is is mind blowing in every way especially in a small cloistered little community like Rancho Santa Fe you know the members knew about this obviously at least one club employee knew about it and in talking to all of them they they said at some point this all kind of blew up and all of a sudden Phil was no longer coming around the club and then his membership got transferred to xander softly because Phil wasn't using it and so you have the mass and club you have the bridges you have the farms these are three elite golf clubs all of a sudden Phil's no longer a member and he used all of them he loved to play golf at all of them he was he was a fixture at all of them and the reason he left the club to have nothing to do like he didn't like the green speeds anymore or he felt like the the range balls were substandard you know it was it was all related to his his personal conduct so again it's it's part of this larger pattern each individual case is not necessarily a red flag people leave golf clubs it happens for whatever reason but this pattern of behavior it's telling so that that's not as able to bring to light and at the mass and club I had four sources at the bridges I had four sources and these were not random members like oh I once saw Phil across the locker room and he waved at me like these were guys who played golf with Phil they'd been to his house that they were close to Phil and building the story around all these details at all these different places and all these different people I think in the end that's why Phil didn't really contest any of it after we sent him the fact checking and the request for comment is because the totality of the report he's so big and where he's playing as golf now nobody knows he's still a member at Delmar he's always going to find a game somewhere but it's stunning that he he can no longer go to his his his favorite golf clubs so the thing that I think about that we've talked about previously because this is not the first episode about Phil Mikkelson that we've done together Alan the thing I think about is something you told me before about the juice and what animates a guy like Phil Mikkelson and how is it that he keeps finding himself in these scenarios the equivalent as you put it of a guy who's trapped in a bunker and there's a miracle shot out there maybe yeah there's a quote in the scratch story that is really sums it all up and again this the guy played a lot of golf with Phil they had a few business enterprises and he said he's just a dopamine addict he said Phil does everything for the dopamine the way he plays the game the gambling you know chasing chicks on the road in his formulation even going to live golf he just needs action at all times he just needs the dopamine 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 get dive right down that path and be all in on that and it tracks you know the alleged incident where he's he's propositioning this woman at dinner surrounded by other diners like there was probably some sort of thrill in that because you're violating these social morays and you're or toying with your public image. And you see this through line in his behavior on the golf course for sure, and all the other hygiene. It's even the stable offshore, you know? There's probably other ways you can invest money, but there's something thrilling about this high-wire act of trying to get the President of the United States to advocate for you and trying to circumvent Gavin Newsom. And like, you know, put the money in teabons. There's the ways to make money. There is no golfer that it turns out is less like a mutual fund than Phil Mikkelsen. (laughing) Because the stable offshore story, which is how we started this now ongoing series about Phil Mikkelsen. Again, for those not familiar, Phil Mikkelsen became an investor in this oil and gas company named Sabel Offshore. It controls oil drilling platforms off the coast of Santa Barbara. We did this episode with the reporting of Sam Kapleman, a hundred brick media. It resulted in, it turns out, a newly relevant group chat message involving big daddy Trump and Donald Trump's genitalia, which we'll just flash on screen here for those who are watching on YouTube. And at last check, the paperwork that Sabel Offshore filed with the SEC, they had to admit that they received subpoenas from the DOJ from the SEC related to some of the information reported in that episode by Hunter Brook. And then last week, just last week, there's this political headline, quote, "Here's how a small oil company became a weapon in Trump's assault on California." End quote, detailing the political fight that Trump is waging against Governor Gavin Newsom. Talks about how the Trump administration via executive order restarted the pumping of this oil raising various environmental and regulatory concerns. And that's not even getting, of course, to the other, I would say, Middle East driven concern with Liv Golf, which is its own saga that we've also covered here. It raises the question, Alan, of, are Phil's colleagues, his friends, the people he's known forever? Is this surprising, or maybe even more pointedly, how do they feel about this guy now in your understanding? - Phil's always been polarizing. And when my book came out in 2022, I had players, caddies, tour wives, agents, manufacturing reps. People walked up to me at tournaments or they sent me notes and they said, thank you for writing this book, because they knew there'd been this divide between the public and the private Phil. And the book kind of offered a road map between these two different people and these two different lives. And there's always been a resentment that Phil got such adoring press when people knew some of these stories that they've been floating around forever. There's PGA tour players who will, they won't say it publicly, but we'll say it privately, that Phil was right about a lot of things when it came to the governance of the tour and the PGA tour, stashed away all this money in the reserve fund that should have gone to the players, 'cause since the arrival of Liv Golf, which Phil helped birth, the money has been flowing on the PGA tour and the players have taken over the governance of the tour. He was correct on both accounts that a tour had more money to give and that the players should be running the tour. So they will grudgingly acknowledge that Phil has made their lives better and much more lucrative, but because he's been such a troll and because he's been so obnoxious in the press about this whole battle between the tours, they don't want to publicly acknowledge these things. They will privately. But so yeah, I mean, Phil's been polarizing for a long time with his peers and this has barely even been remarked upon, but when Phil won the 2021 PGA championship, that got him a five year exemption into the US open. This would have been his last US open at Shinnecock under that exemption and that's gone now and so he may never play another US open and it wasn't even remarked upon. And he had a chance to win there in 2004. It's probably the best golf he ever played and he didn't win and he still sour about it. And yet this Shinnecock open came and went and was hardly an acknowledgement of Phil. There's sort of Phil erasure going on for various reasons. So he's always been polarizing. It's he's become much more so now. And that's part of the tragedy of this whole Phil Michelson story is that this guy had it all. And he could have been this beloved elder statespin and he could have made more money than he ever did to live golf in the CBS booth. He could have been making $20 million a year more or less forever as a TV guy. He would have been the writer cup captain at the writer cup of a bet pace last fall. Like that was Taylor made for Phil. He'd been penciled in there forever. How Nicholas and Palmer were the honorary starters at the Masters forever. That would have been Phil and Tiger and that's probably gone now too. And so the amount of goodwill he's burned up from 2021 until now is phenomenal. When Phil won that P.J. championship at age 50 in 2021, it was the ultimate achievement in golf. It highlighted the fact that he'd been at the front ranks of the game for three decades, unparalleled longevity across all professional sports. And the outpouring of love and affection around him was extreme. And so that's all gone now. And that's, you can only have so much empathy because it's all from his own doing, but it is an incredible fall from grace. And the Tiger parallels, you know, Tigers committed actual crimes. He's been in a judicial system. Yes. He's in danger of the lives of many people by being on the road when he's so impaired. And his dick pic actually went public. Tiger has had so much messiness in his life for 17 years now. And yet he keeps getting welcome back. He does have that elder statesman role, you know, they offered him the right of cup captancies. He's been the president's cup captain. He's the chairman of the Futurist Competition Committee on the P.J. Tour. He's basically running the P.J. Tour. And so it's an interesting thought exercise. You know, why has Tiger been redeemed and why has Phil not? And part of it is because the other players like Tiger, he's always been good to them. He's never criticized them publicly. He's never talked trash about them. But mostly his loyalty to the P.J. Tour put money in their pockets in a way that felt right. Whereas Phil going to live golf created all this angst. And so it really comes down to, in the final analysis, Phil burned a lot of players and Tiger never did. And that's why he keeps getting welcome back. And as for the court and public opinion, that's a whole other thing. But my interest here, frankly, is not the court of public opinion. My interest is what's the truth? And where we are, maybe we're in just an earlier cycle in the long arc of redemption that sports allows its athletes, right? Tiger has had a longer roller coaster that we've been watching. Do all of these dips and dives. Phil, thanks in large part to your work. We are only grasping the sense of what a loop to loop his life has actually been. And so I'm not saying that Phil will not be redeemed. I'm merely saying that what has happened is by his own design, perhaps both inevitable and overdue. And that's why I want to do this episode with you. Yeah, there's no night he adds, starting Tiger Woods, or he says, winning takes care of everything. And Tiger, after the sex scandal in 2009, he got back to number one. He started winning tournaments again. And prescription paying killers in 2017, he came back and he won the Masters. And so he has been able to win his way out of some of this. Phil, at 56 years old, that's probably not available to him. Tiger's always had the platform of the PGA tour. Phil could be a man with no country professionally speaking. He's not going to go back to the PGA tour. There would be a very long suspension and a very steep fine for him to rejoin the PGA tour. He doesn't want to deal with that. So not only that, the PGA tour, that also means a senior tour, the over 50 guys, because that's part of the tour apparatus. So he can't play on either one of those tours. Live golf may disappear. I mean, where's Phil Mixing going to play his golf? You could go over to the Asian tour. You could play maybe a little bit in Europe. But that would feel like such an exile. And so are we done ever seeing Phil Mixing on another golf tournament? It's startling to think about, because it was only two years ago. Yeah, it's just to win the Masters. But now, like, has he played his last tournament? It's an incredible thing to think about. The last scene, by the way, that I want to mention here is what Phil's presence looks like at the Farms right now. At the Farms, there is a Michael Jordan's on the wall, right? Phil was in that company. Where is that now? Yeah, you know, I went to Roy McLeary's home course the last summer, and it's a museum. They have trophies, and they have photos, and they have memorabilia. And it really feels like a museum. They're so-- proud of him. And you go to the farms now, they took all the photos down. Any mention, any, any sighting of Phil Mickelson that was in the club house has been removed. And it's, it's more than symbolic. I mean, it's like he's, he's just, he's just gone. A far lesser presence at those clubs, a far greater one, on this podcast at least. But there is one last thing before we let you go here because just as we were wrapping up publication of this episode on Thursday, a spokesperson for Phil Mickelson released a 738 word statement, which we're gonna link in the show notes in response to Alan Shipnuck's reporting. And the statement claimed that Phil's departures from golf clubs were his own decisions alone and that he has never been forced by his wife or any golf club to surrender his membership. And that the whole GPS cartboy story was about, quote, an ordinary find my family feature on, you know, cell phones. And in no way sinister. It also says that, quote, Mr. Mickelson's willingness to apologize for his conduct should not be misconstrued as an admission of every allegation made against him. And quote, and then it also argues that Scratch Golf's business relationship with the PGA tour is worth considering given Phil's history with live. Meanwhile, Scratch Golf on behalf of Alan Shipnuck released a long statement of its own, which will also link in the show notes here. But this is a key sentence. Quote, we gave Phil and Amy Mickelson ample time to respond to every element of the story. And they chose not to challenge a single assertion. And quote, in other words, they stand by their reporting. Pablatory finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Karnie, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Nealey Lomon, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tuminello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound designed by Andrew Bursick, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song as always by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.