Phil Mickelson & The Truth and Rumors On Gambling and His Marriage

In the last few days, there has been a surge of interest to this Website and around the Web looking to find out more information about rumors concerning Phil Mickelson, his wife Amy, their marriage, and his gambling habits. 

Deadspin did a piece to try to uncover the roots of a rumor that Phil's wife Amy had a mid 2000s affair with Michael Jordan.  Sports by Brooks looked into the idea that Mickelson signed a 2004 deal with Callaway Golf in order to pay off his supposed massive gambling debts.  Stephanie Wei's post from several months back about the notion that Sports Illustrated or another publication with two words in its title (one of which is golf) would do an expose on the story has been unearthed in recent days by rumor sites.

By doing some digging and some asking of sources in the know on this now nearly seven year old set of rumors, let's set the record as straight as possible.

The rumors all began in 2001 when Phil Mickelson talked in a USA Today profile piece about how he landed huge on a preseason bet that the Baltimore Ravens would win the Superbowl that year.  (The Ravens crushed the Giants.)

Of the bet and the rationale for it, Mickelson said, "The year before they'd finished the season at 6-2, barely missing the playoffs.  I liked their offseason player acquisitions, and (coach) Brian Billick is brilliant — he ran an offense that accentuated the defense, went for field position and kept the clock moving."

Mickelson said that he wasn't the only man in on the bet.  He was in with a group of 28 people - a "syndicate."

The piece also detailed his relationship with Titleist, with whom he signed a reported $50 million deal in 2000.  That relationship granted Mickelson rarely given access to Titleist personnel.

Titleist's Larry Bobka said of the relationship, "We've made a handmade set of irons for Davis Love ... and also for Tiger Woods, but we don't do it that often, and we've never done it for a left-hander. It's extremely costly and time-consuming."

A 2002 profile of Mickelson in Sports Illustrated discussed his penchant for gambling...on almost anything.  An anecdote is shared of Mickelson's now infamous '01 bet at the Akron, OH event (oh, he has a kid there!) with Mike Weir that Jim Furyk would hole his bunker shot on the last hole.  He did, and Mickelson collected from Weir, as the story goes.  The Tour admonished Mickelson for making that public.  Perhaps aware of the backlash from the Tour about the comments, Mickelson has since shied away from remarks about gambling.

After Mickelson broke through at the '04 Masters, he and his people with Gaylord Sports sought to renegotiate their deal with Titleist.  Sixteen months remained on the deal, but Mickelson sought to capitalize upon his new status as Masters champion.  Seeing as thought Titleist wouldn't acquiesce to Tiger Woods' demands for more money and brand positioning, Mickelson was unlikely to get the treatment Woods was denied. 

Golfweek quoted Mickelson's teacher Rick Smith in saying, "It’s not Phil shopping as much as it is Titleist not wanting to pay him."

Mickelson signed with Callaway just weeks before the Ryder Cup in '04.  That move was natural considering that Mickelson's brother had been helped by the company with some equipment.  Phil even left a voicemail with  Callaway rep Mike Galeski to thank the company and praise their equipment.  That did not sit well with Titleist boss Wally Uihlein.  The recording was used, unauthorized by Mickelson, in sales calls for Callaway.  Titleist threatened to sue.  Golfweek reported at the time of the lawsuit threat that Callaway would make a strong push for Mickelson when his deal was to expire in '05.  They got him sooner than that. 

It was an easy negotiation for Mickelson with Callaway.  He got paid to the tune of $80 million.  The problem was that the switch was made just two weeks before the Ryder Cup.  Mickelson played terribly that week causing questions about the timing and his performance.  Then Ryder Cup captain Hal Sutton (arguably the worst in the history of the event) was asked about the change and quoted in a Washington Post piece.

"You know what? Phil is capable of playing good golf with anything," Sutton said.  Sutton repped Callaway at the time.

Mickelson had not played well coming into the Ryder Cup, doing poorly at the Canadian Open.  The club switch likely came at that time because Mickelson, according to a source, had difficulty in securing his release from his Titleist contract.  The squeeze left him with little time to prepare for the Ryder Cup and Mickelson would not appear at the matches without an equipment deal.

The '05 Masters, though, saw the mainstream birth of the rumor that Mickelson had made the switch because of sizable gambling debts.  The rumor was actually born out of the Pebble Beach event in February that year.  Supposedly, Mickelson owed some $5-7 million to Vegas bookies.  Callaway was quick to squash that rumor saying they have run a considerable background check on Mickelson before completing the deal to sign him, and he came back clean. 

(For what it's worth, Nike has repeated said they did background checks on Tiger Woods before inking and re-inking deals with him.  That didn't quite work out, though it is a customary practice to run a full background on any player seeking a golf endorsement deal.)

The public questioning of Mickelson about the rumor and his gambling grew at the Masters in his pre-tournament press conference.  Mickelson was asked about a quote from a Golf Magazine piece in which Mickelson claimed to have stopped gambling two years prior - in March - after the birth of his son Evan.  Complications from that pregnancy nearly killed his wife Amy.  Mickelson's response? "I never said that."  He referred the reporter to his book for more.

The interview in Golf Magazine quoted Mickelson as saying his son was why he stopped gambling.   "Evan (his son). I don't really want to get into that, but it's in my new book, One Magical Sunday. But I did it for Evan."  Mickelson had repeated the claim to USA Today in May 2003 in the midst of Mickelson's worst season on the PGA Tour.

The major-golf-publication-with-two-words-that-has-golf-in-the-title had apparently been looking into the claims, according to a source.  They had a single source in Vegas that was well-connected and willing to make claims about Mickelson's gambling on the record.  Ultimately, that article was squashed by editorial leadership because of the magazine's long-standing relationship with Mickelson and the lack of sources willing to verify on top of the Vegas-based source.  Also, there was something about a round at Pine Valley on the line.

The big problem here is that the rumored magazine to print the rumor was that Sports Illustrated was going to be the magazine to print the story about Mickelon's gambling.  According to the source, that was not true.  Had the magazine gotten the story cold, the source said, they would have published it at the time.  They didn't have it.  The source says no advertiser threatened to pull ads over the story that didn't exist. 

In 2008, a poster at the golf forum Golf WRX posted a topic citing a "Golfweek insider" that Mickelson had lost several hundred thousand dollars to an Augusta member on pre-tournament golf bets.  Golf Digest - which is affiliated with the site - removed the post and Golfweek editor Jeff Babineau said that the rumors were false.  The posting got several basic facts about Augusta, members, and the PGA Tour's relationship with the Masters wrong.

When Mickelson appeared this past winter on CBS' Super Bowl Today program in a segment sponsored by Callaway Golf, the rumors about his gambling resumed.  Mickelson made his "pick" for the Colts-Saints game on the basis of which ball he hit the furthest.

The rumor of a blowout surfaced again in 2006, on the message board post discussed in the Deadspin piece.  This time, it added that Rick Reilly was doing the piece (he wasn't).  The content of the piece was different now, though.  This piece would be an expose on Mickelson's sex life and claim Mickelson had an illegitimate child in Ohio and that wife Amy had been caught by Phil in an affair with Michael Jordan.

Phil Mickelson met his wife Amy in 1992 when they were both at Arizona State.  He didn't ask her on a date until a year later at a charity golf event after Mickelson had graduated and turned pro.  Amy Mickelson was a cheerleader for the Phoenix Suns in the early 90s, during college.  She also ran a dance class that taught future Suns dancers.

That's about as far as the bio file goes on Amy.  Not much is said of her in press.  Deadspin may have investigated into the originations of the claims, but they received a tip in their mailbox about the rumor in January 2009.  Amy, the joker that she is, acknowledged the rumor just this past spring to Steve Elling in a kidding aside for CBS Sports.

"Oh, wait, have you heard the one about me and Michael Jordan?" she said, howling.

The rumor about Mickelson's Ohio love child, though, seems to have never been substantiated by any writer.  Among golf writers and insiders, the rumor had crept in that Mickelson had gotten together with a woman that worked at the First Tee of Columbus, OH, near the site of Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament.  The NY Post's rumor column, though, claimed that Mickelson had the love child in Akron - home to the course where Mickelson bet Weir and won.

It's curious that the rumors pertain to Ohio for multiple reasons.  For one, Mickelson has played the Akron event every year since 1999 and this rumor has never turned into news in that market.  Mickelson had played in the Memorial event in Columbus from 2006 through '08, but missed last year.  Tournament host Jack Nicklaus was once rumored to have been given an ultimatum from wife Barbara about an affair he had maintained in Australia during the 70s while cleaning up at the Australian Open.