1-Man’s Opinion-Wednesday “Talking Truth-Golf”
The language of golf you understand. Birdie-Par-Bogey.
The language of the golfer that needs some explanation. Hobby-Habit-Addiction.
Phil Mickelson’s illustrious golf career is headed to its twilight stage. His personal life now seems entrapped in dark shadows.
Lefty has given us the greatest of joys on the courses over the years. The Grand Slam wins. The wild shots. The ever-constant smile. The heart-warming story of his battle with arthritic issues in his joints. The global support of his family in his wife’s fight with breast cancer. He has been special in every facet of his public life.
His private life has taken some twists and turns.
The revelations of his heavy involvement with a known gambler out of LaQuinta. The transfer of nearly 3M from his bank accounts, that wound up being laundered thru other bank accounts, for placement of bets with off-shore accounts. The allegations the money was used to further fund a gambling ring.
This comes just years after Mickelson was tied into a probe of ‘insider trading’ on stocks, that caused a look-see into his business dealings.
Mickelson has never been charged with wrong doing, but you wonder about his decision making, and the people he has done ‘big business’ with, convicted gamblers and people penalized for SEC frauds.
We’ve all know the fun stories of Mickelson, he, the sports fans, the big-time events, placing big bets on sporting events. When you make big money, 77M in reported earnings, you have big dollars to play games with. He loves golf, and he loves the Las Vegas nightlife too.
But the latest episode of “Outside the Lines” on ESPN, the huge amounts of money being filtered to a gambler, tantamount to money-laundering, could sure leave a stain on one of San Diego’s greatest athletes and personalities of all time.
I guess you give him benefit of the doubt, till something more significant occurs. You’d hate to think Phil Mickelson’s reputation would wind up in the same gutter as Tiger Woods.
But business transactions of this magnitude, with people like that, open you up to more significant scrutiny than just standing over a critical putt on a sudden hole in a Grand Slam event. Why do I think of Pete Rose right now? Why do I imagine Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street, and ‘Greed is Good’?..
The always talkative golfer isn’t talking right now about all this. You would hope he would sometime soon. Talk that he made a mistake, that maybe he has a problem, or he just hung out with the wrong people.
Phil Mickelson has to tell us whether his placing bets like this a “hobby, habit or addiction”. This sure looks like a bogey in life, not a birdie from a superstar.