An excerpt from golfer Phil Mickelson’s autobiography claims that federal auditors discovered a four-year gambling spell that lost him more than $40 million. [Image: Shutterstock.com]
The Federal Reserve disclosed the losses
An excerpt from Alan Shipnuck’s forthcoming biography on Phil Mickelson claims that federal auditors investigating the professional golfer’s role in an insider trading scheme disclosed gambling losses of more than $40 million.
An excerpt from the new book appeared Thursday via the Shipnuck website. On the same day on Twitter, the golf writer said Mickelson was a “complicated person,” while sharing excerpts from his book due out in May:
Shipnuck confirmed that he based his gambling allegations on a source who supposedly had direct access to documents from federal auditors who looked into Mickelson’s finances over the course of four years.
It is assumed that his income reached more than 40 million dollars annually
The losses came between 2010 and 2014, a period the author describes as Mickelson’s major earning years, when his income is supposed to come in at more than $40 million a year. The book excerpt reads: “According to government review, [$10m]It is roughly the average of Mickelson’s annual gambling losses over the four years.
ostentatious bookmaker?
Shipnuck’s upcoming book is called “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (And Unauthorized!) The Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Star”. If the snippet is anything to go byThe book will paint a picture of Jekyll and Hyde, the six-time Grand Slam winner.
In one instance, the author also mentioned a Mickelson moment involving a prominent golf reporter of the 2000s, John Hawkins. According to Shipnuck, the pair were alone in the PGA Tour locker room when Mickelson began betting on college basketball games. Shipnuck cites Hawkins as saying:
For more than 20 minutes it must be a 50 bet.”
“It was like he was showing off,” Hawkins added, while never making the incident public.
In his excerpt, the author also blames money issues for Mickelson’s 2017 break from the packs long Jim McKay. While the split appears amicable on the surface, Mackay’s biography claims: “Phil was expelled on his seventeenth anniversary, due to a series of mounting grievances. […] Including hundreds of thousands of dollars in late payment.”
Despite Shipnuck’s new discoveries, Mickelson’s involvement in gambling over the years is common knowledge. In 2016, he was a relief advocate in the civil lawsuit that sent famed Las Vegas gambler William “Billy” Walters to prison in 2017 along with a $10 million fine.
Twitter reacts
The snippet sparked contradictory reactions on Twitter.
A user named Brett suggested that things got personal between the author and the golfer. While Mickelson has had a love-hate relationship with the media over the years, Shipnuck responded via Twitter to rebut the personal beef, saying that he celebrates the golfer’s virtues in his book, without giving up his “mess”:
The author also shared a tweet by gambling industry writer Brad Allen, who himself shared an excerpt from the book, in which former NBA star Charles Barkley Mickelson compares favorably to Tiger Woods:
