Pablo Torre Finds Out - Uncovering Phil Mickelson's Misconduct Allegations, with Alan Shipnuck

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

After months of rumors, journalist Alan Shipnuck investigates why Phil Mickelson has basically vanished from the LIV Golf Tour — and social media. Leading us down a rabbit hole of hidden misconduct claims and exits from three different golf clubs. Not to mention 19 sources, an off-shore oil pipeline and an ex-friend's ex-wife: Ashley Perez.Read Alan Shipnuck’s reporting at Skratch Golf: https://www.skratch.golf/news/pro-golf/phil-mickelson-misconduct-women-madison-club-bridges-farms-exitsRead Phil Mickelson’s spokesperson’s statement: https://x.com/_davidrumsey/status/2072655169792225420?s=46Read Skratch’s response: https://x.com/_davidrumsey/status/2072696394997981241?s=46 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 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 Offshore? How's that permit going? We are talking on Tuesday, and I just checked the Sable Offshore stock price.

It sunk 40% this morning on a $1.2 billion capital raise plan this after the president of the United States sort of came over the top to say, drill baby drill not exactly the greatest month for Phil Mickelson I think the president saying we should drill more wouldn'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 is Phil going to bring peace to the mid-east with this offshore pipeline? We could pull up stakes and be like, all right, never mind. We don't need that, you, Rob. We're good. We got this.

Oh, boy. We got this all under control. So something extremely strange has been happening with Phil Mickelson. I made a lot of other strange things that were already happening with Phil Mickelson, like the impending collapse of the Saudi-backed Liv 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 Mickelson, 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. One of his kids has had some serious health issues.

And then in mid-March, he made his debut at... live South Africa, which is not just right around the corner from his home in San Diego. And I talked to some live golfers, 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 PGA championship. And he kept citing the family health situation, although clearly it was okay for him to go to South Africa. So that was part of the mystery.

as Liv Golf is fighting for its survival, you know, Phil's its biggest star. He's the most accomplished player. He's really the godfather of Liv Golf. He helped found the whole thing. And for him to be underground was stunning. But even more conspicuous, Phil Mickelson also went dark on Twitter,

where he had transformed into one of the most prolific posters in all the sports, which leads us now back to Alan Shipnuck, the guy who literally wrote the book on Phil 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 anchored in Carlsbad, 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 at golf. And there are other clubs where there's a lot of drinking, there's a lot of carousing. That's never really been the vibe at the farms. And, you know, Phil liked 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 a woman who worked there, by all counts, young, attractive. And Phil was playing with some guys. And something happened. And 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 is not welcome on the property anymore. And the term that the golf I just used was non-consensual and inappropriate physical contact.

So 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, my phone started ringing probably three days after it happened. And it sounds like yours did too. And I reached out to the general manager and never got back to me. But 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 been law enforcement involved. I can't say anything that if I dropped this story with only anonymous sources, Phil would attack me and say, I haven't vetted 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 long tangled history

that like I do with Mickelson. 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 called me back. So people became a little more willing to talk, and I was getting more tips, and I was able to chase the story harder.

And so in some ways, I guess it was probably helpful that it was digested that was able to crack the code on the farms. I mean, just the visual that was reported in which Phil Mickelson 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 Mickelson. 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, Phil's the king of San Diego. He's born and raised there. He's always lived there. Rancho Santa Fe is this very exclusive sort of enclave, just a little north of the city. But his, for all intents 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 a 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 the 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-to-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 Mickelson, is what is unsaid, is no longer a member of the farm's 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 who 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 who 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 there was 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 was 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 into 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 try 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. Like, 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 of point, which is what we're describing for Phil Mickelson right now, I mean, it comes amid this larger now increasingly, I think, answerable mystery. of like, where the f*** 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 Shinnock. That comes and goes. He's not there.

The PGA championship. His name appears, and then it disappears. And 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. Payne Stewart makes that iconic putt. Payne Stewart is the 1999 U.S. Open Champion. If you had made that putt, they would have gone to playoff 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 then that becomes part of the story. 2010 Masters, you know, Amy and then Phil's mother, Mary, both have breast cancer. And Phil wins a Masters for them. People have been wondering all this year during Tiger's 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. And 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 a stark contrast. You know, that Masters was his morality play at Augusta National. So it's not just that Phil has lost his way, It's at this beloved figure, and it was a huge part of his brand, was the loving husband and the doting 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. He 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 Mickelson 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. 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 teams as that's when Phil lost his way. 2013 was when he won the Open Championship at Muirfield. 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 living their lives. And so someone extremely close to Phil in that period said that he 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's wife, Ashley. When she started dating Pat, she was only 22, she was young and kind of innocent. She was new to golf, new to the lifestyle, all of it. And so people had 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, 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 like, great. 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, Pat says they 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 table. No acknowledgement of what happened. You know, Ashley's 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 Cloud Harmon is seven years later. Right.

So after that podcast goes viral, Phil calls Pat again to talk about this situation and have this 26-minute phone call that Ashley recorded. It's on speakerphone 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 helped make this story what it is because that lays the groundwork.

But you can tell he doesn't really believe that Phil doesn't remember, but what's you going to do with that? And that phone call 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. 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 Lehrer 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 reached out to her. And again, 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 no longer felt beholden to carry. the secret and I think she had 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, members 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 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 dinner, 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. No one wanted to be the first person to jump into the pool to test the water. Once Ashley said, yes, I was able to get 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 named person in the story. Like, you need someone to have the courage to actually say it.

The end of day. 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 to stay up to date on all things related to the World Cup. You can wake up with the Totally Football Show from L.A., then dive deep into the biggest talking point of the day with the Athletic FC podcast. and you can watch the TIFO 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 but people have been afraid to go public because it's Phil Mickelson.

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 exemplary. 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, right? Some of the allegations circulating about Mr. Mickelson 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. Mickelson and his family have lived. His story struggles in recovery, belong 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 Mickelson, has supported Mr. Mickelson 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. Mickelson'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, swear. swirling in Phil's life, which are, again, worthy of consideration. Private 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 non-specific denials of what we're outlining here.

Yeah, I like the little jab in there about no book can accurately convey it. No book, Alan. 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 Miggleson kids. This is, no doubt, an incredibly difficult time. People are allowed to make mistakes and hopefully transcend them.

The real issue, and I know, I already knew this, but reading the Twitter replies has been a little dispiriting. There's been a lot of love out there, you know, for people still doing journalism, which I know you get when you do these big pieces as well, and that's gratifying. 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. This dinner party. Just a dinner party, right?

because I do want to just provide some of the context in your reporting here. Yeah, let's get into that. Sure. 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 had 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, he was using incredibly graphic language. He was using two-finger. to demonstrate his techniques. He's like, and we were at this nice restaurant with a bunch of people's table. 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. And Pat Prez is talking about that dinner. And he says, I didn't really have a problem with it. He's like, what coach did, and coach is Phil's longtime agent Steve Floyd, who I reached out to for comment who didn't respond.

And so how many times does this happen? It's not appropriate. It's not acceptable. That was just a strain that kept coming up over and over is somebody has to stop this. It's just this longstanding pattern of behavior. You know, what happened with Ashley Perez, both a dinner party and the photograph, that was 2015. What happened at the farms is 2006. 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 Mickelson 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 Mickelson 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, and I want to take us now to the Madison Golf Club first, it's also Phil's family intervening, it sounds like.

Yeah, 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 it's known as a as a good time we're in le kinta 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, but that's not 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 PG's,

J-Tor 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. I talked to members. I talked to employees. They said they almost never saw Amy there. She would bring the kids. They'd 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, you know, said at some point, Phil started, you know, overnight guests in the in this 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 remember the order it was a veggie omelet and an almond milk latte and um he'd go out and play the food would be delivered to whomever was was still staying and that's how everyone described it and so uh at some point, the club management gets a phone call from, you know, the Mickelson's wealth management firm, and they say they want the condos sold and the membership terminated. And Phil's no longer, you know, going to be a member at the Madison Club. And this all happens very hastily.

It never says goodbye. You know, the people there loved them, 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, 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. And, you know, talking to multiple, multiple members, they said, you know, all of a sudden, things were just different. He became close with a guy who owned a big house on the course, and he was going over to that house a lot.

And then this members said, you know, he would Phil would give his phone to this cart 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 unschaparone free time. And so that thing about the phone was corroborated by all the members. One told me it wasn't just the cart boys.

Like, you know, he would just put it in a member's cart and say, hey, I'm going to leave my phone here. I'll catch up the on the back night. And a couple hours later, he'd zoom out there and play a little golf and grab his phone. I need to stop for a second and just understand the plan here. Because this rumor, by the way, is also something that I had heard way way more abstractly that, like, hey, you ever heard the story about how Phil Mickelson 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 Mickelson 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 not only keep, but to create the secret, thinking none of this will come back to bite me at some point 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 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 Xandershoffley because Phil wasn't using it. And so you have the Madison 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 a fixture at all of them. And the reason he left the clubs had nothing to do with like, oh, he didn't like the green speeds anymore, or he felt like the range balls were substandard. You know, it was all related to his personal conduct. So again, 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's what I was able to bring to light. And at the Masking 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. They were close to Phil.

And building this 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 his golf now, nobody knows. He's still a member at Del Mar. He's always going to find a game somewhere. But it's stunning that he can no longer go to 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 Mickelson that we've done together at. The thing I think about is something you told me before about the juice and what animates a guy like Phil Mickelson 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 really sums it all up. And again, this 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 ever try something like that, I could easily get dive right down that path and and be all in on that. And so 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, you're violating these social mores and you're toying with your public image. And you see this, this, this, this, this, this. through line in his in his behavior on the golf course for sure and all the other hijinks 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 president of united states to advocate for you and and trying to circumvent gavin newsome and like you know put the money in t-bonds there's ways to make money there is no golfer that it turns out is less like a mutual

fund than Phil Mickelson. Because the Sable Offshore story, which is how we started this now ongoing series about Phil Mickelson, again, for those not familiar, Phil Mickelson became an investor in this oil and gas company named Sable Offshore. It controls oil drilling platforms off the coast of Santa Barbara. We did this episode with the reporting of Sam Copleman in Hunterbrook Media. It resulted in, it turns out, a newly relevant group chat. message involving Big Daddy Trump and Donald Trump's genitalia, which will just flash on screen

here for those who are watching on YouTube. And at last check, the paperwork that Sable 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 LiveGolf, 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 roadmap 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. They've been floating around forever. There's PJT tour players who will, they won't say it publicly, but will say privately that, you know, Phil was right about a lot of things when it came to the government. of the tour and the PGA tour stashed away all this money in the reserve fund that should have gone to the players.

Sure. Because since the arrival of live 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 Tories, they don't want to publicly acknowledge these things.

They will privately. 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 U.S. Open. This would have been his last U.S. Open at Shinnock under that exemption. and that's gone now. And so he may never play another U.S. 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's still sour about it. And yet the Shinnacock Open came and went, and there was hardly an acknowledgment of Phil. There's sort of Phil erasure going on for various reasons. So he's always been polarizing. He's become much more so now.

And that's part of the tragedy of this whole. Phil Mickelson story is that this guy had it all and he could have been this beloved elder statesman and he could have made more money than he ever did through LiveGolf in the CBS booth. He could be making $20 million a year more or less forever as a TV guy. He would have been the Ryder Cup captain at the Ryder Club at Beth Page last fall. Like that was tailor-made for Phil. He'd been penciled in there forever. You know how Nicholas and Palmer were the honorary starters at the master.

forever, you know, 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. You know, when Phil won that PGA championship at age 50 in 2021, it was the ultimate achievement in golf. It highlighted the fact that he had been at the front ranks of the game for three decades, you know, 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, 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, Tiger's committed actual crimes. He's been in the judicial system. Yes. He's endangered the lives of many people by being on the road when he's so impaired. and his dick pick 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 Ryder Cup captaincy. He's been the President's Cup captain. He's the chairman of the futures competitions committee on the PGT tour. He's basically running the PGA tour. And so it's an interesting thought exercise. You know, why has Tiger been redeemed and why is 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 pGA tour put money in their pockets in a way that that felt right whereas Phil going to live golf created all this this angst and 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 of public opinion, that's a whole other thing. 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-de-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 an old Nike ad starring Tiger Woods where he says, you know, winning takes care of everything. Tiger, you know, after the sex scandal in 2009,

you know, he got back to number one. He started to win internemus again. And prescription painkillers in 2017, he came back and he won the Masters. And so he has been. been able to 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. You know, 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 mean the PGA tour, that also means the senior tour, the over 50 guys, because that's part of the tour apparatus. So he can't play on either one. one of those tours. Live golf may disappear. I mean, where is Phil Mickelson going to play his golf? He could go over to the Asian tour, but 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 Mickelson another golf tournament? It's startling to think about because there's only two years ago he had a chance 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's, you know, Michael Jordan's on the wall, right? Phil was in that company. Where is that now? Yeah, you know, I went to Roy McElroy's home course 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 sighting of Phil Mickelson that was in the clubhouse has been removed.

And it's more than symbolic. I mean, it's like 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 Meckleson released a 738 word statement,

which we're going to 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 cart boy 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 Shepnuck 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. End quote. In other words, they stand by their reporting. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tuminello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bursick, Digital Strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, Beam Song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.