Famed Gambler: Phil Mickelson Bet Over $1B on Sports

Golf pro Phil Mickelson wagered more than $1 billion on sports over 30 years and attempted to place a $400,000 bet on Team USA in the 2012 Ryder Cup in which he participated, according to a new memoir by renowned gambler Billy Walters.

“Phil liked to gamble as much as anyone I’ve ever met,” Walters wrote in the book, “Gambler: Secrets from a Life of Risk.”

“Frankly, given Phil’s annual income and net worth at the time, I had no problems with his betting. And still don’t. He’s a big-time gambler, and big-time gamblers make big bets. It’s his money to spend how he wants.”

But Walters said he drew a line when Mickelson, a six-time major champion who recently signed a multiyear contract with LIV Golf worth about $200 million, called Walters from Medinah Country Club during the 39th Ryder Cup and asked him to place a $400,000 wager on the U.S. team to win.

“Have you lost your %&*$ing mind?” Walters said he responded. “Don’t you remember what happened to Pete Rose? You’re seen as the modern-day Arnold Palmer. You’d risk all that for this? I want no part of it.”

Walters said Mickelson also lost close to $100 million in gambling, made 3,154 bets in 2011, and made 43 bets on Major League Baseball games in one day.

“In all the decades I’ve worked with partners and beards, Phil had accounts as large as anyone I’d seen,” Walters writes. “You don’t get those accounts without betting millions of dollars.”

The Fire Pit Collective and Golf Digest published an excerpt from Walters’ book, which will be released this month by Simon & Schuster.

A federal jury in Manhattan in 2017 convicted Walters of 10 criminal charges related to insider trading. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Walters and Mickelson were investigated for well-timed trades on Dean Foods stocks. Mickelson, who was not charged with wrongdoing, paid back a little over $1 million that the SEC alleged he had earned trading the stock.

Mickelson refused to testify in an ensuing insider trading case against Walters.

“Phil Mickelson, one of the most famous people in the world and a man I once considered a friend, refused to tell a simple truth that he shared with the FBI and could have kept me out of prison,” Walters writes. “I never told him I had inside information about stocks and he knows it. All Phil had to do was publicly say it. He refused.”