The PGA Tour Will Look More Like LIV Golf, But Did Phil Mickelson's Gambling Play a Part?

The Hall of Famer's gambling and the current pro golf landscape are different topics that some believe are linked.

A sleepy week in golf these days is seemingly as rare as a slow-play penalty. Such is the state of the game that the off-the-course headlines continue to pile up, with no end in sight.

The announcement of a new PGA Tour schedule that includes eight "Signature Events" with big purses and five of them limited fields without a 36-hole cut was enough to chew on.

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Then came the release of an excerpt of Billy Walters’s book in which he detailed the massive betting impulses of Phil Mickelson, said he believed the golfer lost as much as $100 million gambling while betting $1 billion over 30 years. Oh, and wanted to place a wager on the 2012 Ryder Cup—in which Walters basically told Phil he was nuts.

And while those are two wildly divergent topics, there are some who believe they are related.

The narrative goes like this: Mickelson’s gambling debts were so huge that he saw LIV Golf and its abundance of riches as a way out. He became the face of the upstart league, signing for a reported $200 million up front, and helped bring other prominent players to join him while jolting the PGA Tour into the action.

The result was the Tour coming up with its own mini-version of LIV riches—limited fields, no cuts, big purses, guaranteed money. And it all stems from Phil’s gambling issues?

That is perhaps a bit too simplistic and glosses over the fact that Mickelson’s issues with Walters—a well-known successful gambler who went to prison because of an insider trading issue that Mickelson was also implicated in—go back a decade. And that Mickelson maintains he was not in financial distress and that, over the years, he was dealing with his gambling addiction.

"My gambling got to a point of being reckless and embarrassing," Mickelson said in an interview with Sports Illustrated last year after signing with LIV Golf. "I had to address it. And I’ve been addressing it for a number of years. And for hundreds of hours of therapy. I feel good where I’m at there. My family and I have been financially secure for some time.

"Gambling has been part of my life ever since I can remember. But about a decade ago is when I would say it became reckless. It’s embarrassing. I don’t like that people know. The fact is I’ve been dealing with it for some time. Amy (his wife) has been very supportive of it and with me and the process. We’re at a place after many years where I feel comfortable with where that is. It isn’t a threat to me or my financial security. It was just a number of poor decisions."

It’s impossible to know if Mickelson’s decision was based in any part on financial difficulties. People are inclined to believe what they want to believe. Walters, in the book excerpt, suggested Mickelson was making in the range of $50 million a year in endorsements alone. He made more than $95 million in official prize money on the PGA Tour.

After his PGA Championship win in 2021 at age 50, Mickelson was undoubtedly in line to cash in even more. So did he really need the money? Who knows? The disclosure that he wanted to bet on the Ryder Cup is troubling enough and might give all stakeholders in the game pause. Was Mickelson betting on events in which he played?

One thing we do know is Mickelson has long been a proponent of events that reward the top players—and that is probably the more relevant link to what will take place on the PGA Tour in 2024 than anything to do with his gambling issues.

The new Signature Events—seven with $20 million purses and an eighth with a $15 million purse, and with 80 players maximum—might not be exactly how Mickelson drew it up, but it’s along the lines of what he has long espoused.

Going back some 10 years or so, I can recall on numerous occasions Mickelson lamenting the PGA Tour’s schedule, how it catered too much to the membership at large and not enough to the stars. Self-serving? No doubt. Mickelson was a generational player, topped only by Tiger Woods throughout his career. What was best for him and the star players is what he championed.

Mickelson always wondered why the Tour subsidized or put in place so many lackluster tournaments that rarely had the top players. It bugged him that the Tour had "opposite" events instead of funneling prize money to fewer events with bigger purses.

If it were up to Mickelson, the Tour schedule would have been capped at around 25 tournaments, with smaller fields. It would mean the best players competing against each other more often. With fewer events to play, the stars would show up at a majority of the tournaments.

And he maintained that he brought this up with commissioner Tim Finchem and later his successor, Jay Monahan. (It should be noted that Mickelson was never a member of the Player Advisory Council or the PGA Tour Policy Board.)

“There are two areas of professional golf that I worked hard on and they weren’t going to happen until LIV, which was a team aspect and elevated events, because the fans need to see the best players play against each other more often," Mickelson told the New York Post and Golf Digest last week at the LIV Golf Bedminster event. “I worked very hard on both of those prior (to LIV) and it was made very clear (by the PGA Tour) that those were not going to come about … because it was believed to be that LIV wasn’t going to happen.

“And now that (LIV Golf) has happened, those changes have been made."

Several PGA Tour players have acknowledged that the significant changes and increase in purses would not have occurred with the LIV Golf disruption.

“Prior to this, Jay and I had three four-hour meetings and all the notes I look back on from those meetings, I would say 85-to-90 percent of them are happening, and I think that’s really cool and I’m happy for the PGA Tour and I wish them all the best," Mickelson said.

How it all plays out remains to be seen. Despite Monahan’s assertion last week that the Tour is headed in the right direction, there remain rumblings about sponsor dissatisfaction over having to pony up more money to meet the demands of the increased purses. And the path to finalizing the "framework agreement" with the Public Investment Fund appears to be a long one.

And certainly not all the players are on board with a system that will see many of them shut out of lucrative events which are seeing their fields decreased by some 40 to 70 spots depending on the tournament.

Mickelson wasn’t asked about that but much of the controversy he’s been involved in over the past two years centers around his belief that the Tour has sat on cash that could have been going to the players.

And as it relates to smaller fields? Back in the day, Mickelson's simple response: play better.

The gambling story understandably overshadowed all last week. Mickelson’s proclivity for action, the assertion that he wanted to bet on the Ryder Cup and the huge sums he may have gambled and lost are both tantalizing and troubling. And that came from just one excerpt of the book, with undoubtedly more to come.

Did it have any impact on where we are now in the game? It’s impossible to know for sure. But LIV golf’s emergence undoubtedly forced change that is still evolving.