Phil Mickelson Rumor Dubious?

By Trashtalk Superstar


With the NCAA Tournament becoming an increasingly smaller image in the DriveandDishMobile's rear view mirror, the Drive and Dish editorial board has decided to broaden the scope of our writing. Our usual intensive focus on college basketball pays dividends for this site during the college basketball season, but once college basketball is over, we have to increase our range to include other topics -- otherwise we'd have nothing to write about.

Don't worry, this site is still all about basketball. And college basketball will probably always take center stage at Drive and Dish. But although last weekend belonged to the Final Four, this weekend the sports world was focused on another annual rite of early Spring: The Masters.

And although the biggest story at Augusta National was obviously the exciting finish that saw South Africa's Trevor Immelman hold off Tiger Woods to capture the green jacket, another story that allegedly leaked out of Augusta created quite a stir online. A rumor about Phil Mickelson supposedly having lost a six figure bet to some members of Augusta National Golf Club was widely circulated on the Internet over the last 4 or 5 days.

And the story sounds plausible: Phil Mickelson is a well known gambler and he's been widely rumored to be carrying some serious gambling debts.

Here's a copy of the emailed story:

"MICKELSON'S GAMBLING DEBTS CAUSE UPROAR AMONG
AUGUSTA MEMBERS

Last week Phil Mickelson was playing a practice round at Augusta and went away from protocol and convinced his playing partners to up the stakes in the usual $1 game. It was Mickelson versus the other three which included some of the deepest pockets among the membership. The stakes: $5000 skins and a pot of $130,000, $100,000 of which was
contributed by Mickelson for the low net score - Mickelson would play off scratch.

According to one of the threesome which obviously will remain anonymous, "everything was going great until the back 9 when Mickelson really could not believe the good fortune of 'chuckie'. He was draining everything on the greens and when he missed the green twice he had two chip-ins. Phil's lead on the scorecard looked safe but in the clubhouse we added it up and lo and behold, Phil owed $200,000." And then it got ugly. The stories by witnesses conflict, but in effect Mickelson tried to pass the bets off as laugh on the first tee and insisted "there was no way he would bet hundreds of thousands on golf." Mickelson believed the standard one dollar game was in effect.

The threesome was having none of it and before you know it the foursome was sitting in the office of Billy Payne who was none too happy about the loud conversations taking place in the dining room. But even in the privacy of the office, Mickelson was being very difficult. According to the same anonymous member "Phil slipped up and admitted that he initiated the stakes and set the terms of the bet. Then he protested at having to pay so much and offered 30 cents on the dollar right then and there, take it or leave it.

Billy was aghast and told Phil, you will arrange to pay every dollar or you will never be welcome at Augusta again, TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT. Mickelson tried to protest and even made a snide remark that Billy couldn't stop him from being welcome at Augusta every April. Billy simply asked are you taking it or leaving it."

Mickelson later called his accountant with the banking details of 'chuckie' and an arrangement was made for a wire transfer of an undisclosed amount. The worse of this may not be over as the other member of the threesome was upset enough to call the PGA Tour. When contacted for a comment, the PGA Tour declined to comment and would not even acknowledge whether or not they have been contacted about the conflict at Augusta National.

From GolfWeek Insider"

But the story may be dubious. At the very least, the editor of the alleged source of said "story"-- Golfweek Magazine--has publicly denied that his publication had any involvement with its origin or dissemination. What's more, Golfweek's editor (Jeff Babineau) points to the date of the rumor's origin as a possible indicator of the story's veracity:

"As the editor of Golfweek, I can assure our readers that nobody at our magazine or Web site (Golfweek.com) had anything to do with this post, which went online (go figure) on April 1.

The fact that Golfweek is in no way involved with this story was pointed out to two key members of the Mickelson camp on the eve of the Masters. A spokesman from Mickelson’s camp called the post 'baseless' and 'erroneous.'"

So what does this have to do with basketball?

Well, aside from the fact that the behavior attributed to Mickelson in the alleged "story" sounds like something that Michael Jordan would do, this has absolutely nothing to do with basketball. But as alluded to in the opening of this post, Drive and Dish is expanding our duties to include writing the occasional post about topics outside of college basketball.

By the way, congratulations to Trevor Immelman on the impressive Masters win.