In 2017, Golf Magazine’s Alan Shipnuck landed a whale for his first turn as a podcast host: Phil Mickelson. Over the course of their hour-long conversation, Mickelson and Shipnuck chatted affably around many golf-adjacent topics — including how Mickelson began dating his wife, Amy, in college.
Mickelson, a psychology major at Arizona State, explained that the human body’s physiological responses to fear and arousal are identical. “So when you’re afraid, your heart pumps faster, and your lungs expand, and your nostrils flare, and your senses become much more acute. And that’s what happens when you’re aroused,” Mickelson told Shipnuck. “So what I would do is I would take Amy — or, you know — to a suspenseful movie. Not a horror movie, but a suspenseful movie. And during this suspenseful time, I would grab their hand, and I would kind of rub it. And she would displace her fear as arousal or attraction for me. And that’s how I was able to, when I didn’t have as much to work with, was able to land such a gem.”
More than 20 years after Mickelson earned his psychology degree, he pulled up a chair at the head of a players’ meeting on Saturday night of the ill-fated 2014 Ryder Cup, the room still quiet and aghast at U.S. captain Tom Watson’s angry, vinegar-laced rant. The Americans had just presented Watson with a gift, and he had done everything but spit on it; the gift meant nothing, Watson told them, if they didn’t win the Cup. Watson had intended to motivate; instead, he had wounded a tired group craving encouragement.
In stepped Mickelson. Where Watson had been bitter, Mickelson was warm; where Watson wounded, Mickelson soothed. “Phil went player by player and told a story about each one,” a source later recounted to ESPN. “It changed the tenor of the room from completely negative and heads down to ‘Let’s give this a go tomorrow.’ He gave almost 180 degrees difference than what Tom did.” He displaced Watson’s venom with affection.
The next afternoon, the U.S. lost — but that doesn’t mean that Mickelson’s speech hadn’t worked. Surrounded by the teammates he’d rallied the night before, and with the shell shock of a blowout loss still ringing in the air, Mickelson launched his famous press conference mutiny — assailing Watson’s captaincy, affixing to Watson’s career a final and unwashable scar, and, in the process, breaking nearly all of golf’s social norms.
And with few exceptions, Mickelson’s emotionally battered teammates did not object. Mickelson had lost the Ryder Cup — not for the last time — but in its stead, he’d secured a place as the players’ emotional leader and protector. He had given them what they needed; and for that, they gave him their loyalty.
There is a fine line between emotional availability and manipulation.
Mickelson is one of golf’s most adored figures; he should be, since it’s a role he’s been building for more than 25 years. Ask people why they like Mickelson, and the stories of one-on-one interactions pour in. He stopped and spoke to my kid at a tournament, some say; He looked me in the eye and said hello. To these, he is not Mickelson — he’s just Phil. It’s the 97th most common name for American men born in the past 100 years, just ahead of Bobby and Johnny; but his fans say his name like he’s the only one, with no doubt you know the Phil of whom they speak. And you do.
Even for those without a personal Mickelson moment, he has been nearly omnipresent in pro golf for so long that even casual fans have a reservoir of memories: his brave, heartbroken smile on the 18th green at Pinehurst No. 2 in 1999; his awkward, joyful leap as the putt fell on his first Masters victory in 2004; the tired, gratified exclamation of his unexpected Open win in 2013.
For a quarter-century, golf fans have bled and cheered and cried with the cheeky, smiling, curly haired player on TV. Share someone’s emotions for long enough, and you feel like you know them; when he smiles at you or tells your children hello, then suddenly, you feel like he knows you too. Since he burst into golf fans’ living rooms in the early 1990s, Mickelson has been golf’s Bill Clinton: hopping from tournament to tournament like campaign rallies, answering throngs of cheers with thumbs-up and smiles. Every person whose path he’s crossed remembers. Over the span of nearly three decades, that adds up.
It’s enough to make people want to believe that Mickelson deserves the adoration they feel for him — that as more than just a golfer, as a person, he is worthy of the place he holds in their hearts. And people who want to believe will ignore things that they don’t want to believe. Like his involvement in an insider trading scam that netted him nearly $1 million in 2012. Or his plan to plead the Fifth Amendment if called to testify at a related trial in 2017 (the Supreme Court has held that a witness may claim the Fifth Amendment’s protections only to avoid testimony “that the witness reasonably believes could be used in a criminal prosecution” against him). Or his complaints that taxes on his staggering income could force him to move from California (Mickelson later apologized for the comment but eventually made good on the threat and moved to Florida, which has no income tax). Or his decision this year to play the European Tour’s Saudi Arabia event, for an appearance fee reportedly in excess of $2 million (“I understand those who are upset or disappointed. You’ll be ok,” Mickelson tweeted). Or his recent rebuke of Curtis Strange, who Mickelson said wasn’t “smart enough” to understand his suggestion that athleticism, rather than equipment, deserved the credit for the past generation’s distance surge.
If any other player had committed just one of these, it might have hounded him the rest of his career. Tiger Woods, the greatest superstar in golf history, lost $22 million in endorsement deals for marital infidelity; Robert Allenby became a permanent laughingstock for faking his kidnapping. Neither of these failings is inconsequential, but neither do they involve people in federal prison. In contrast, Mickelson has spent most of the past decade as golf’s real-life version of the Million Dollar Man, all without any discernible cost to his standing among fans.
He smiles at their kids, and he swashbuckles from hole to hole, all to the growing delight of the galleries. He strokes their hands, replacing their alarm with amazement, their revulsion with thanks. Mickelson’s fans need someone to smile, to give a thumbs-up, and to hit unadvisable wedge shots. Like his Ryder Cup teammates, Mickelson has given them what they need. The rest, apparently, is irrelevant.
None of this is to say, of course, that Mickelson’s swashbuckling isn’t entertaining. Whether Mickelson is his generation’s second-greatest player is debatable, but not whether he is (at least) its second-most entertaining. That isn’t the point.
And yet, it is: that Mickelson’s handshakes and heroics run so deep that his failings, both moderate and obscene, go ignored. If a man with a history of associating with white-collar criminals and abetting human rights violators can sit in the White House, then why can’t another sit on golf’s podium?
Fans don’t get to choose who plays exciting, or who wins five major championships. Mickelson determined that, and it rightly earned him a place as one of golf’s all-time greats. But fans do get to choose who the heroes are. And it’s time to take Mickelson’s hand off ours.
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