Wherever it is that Phil Mickelson is laying low this week, he must be thinking, “if only I hadn’t called Alan Shipnuck.”
Without Mickelson opening his big mouth and telling his unvarnished thoughts on the Saudis behind a renegade golf league (“scary motherf—–s”), Shipnuck still would have produced a read that is a rollicking good time, but it wouldn’t be the talk of the town – and Phil likely wouldn’t be skipping his title defense of this week’s PGA Championship and on sabbatical from what has been a Hall of Fame career.
Who is the real Phil Mickelson? Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and unauthorized) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar seeks that answer. Shipnuck, longtime golf writer for Sports Illustrated and Golf and now a partner in the Firepit Collective, reflects back to something Mickelson said to him during a confrontation that he highlights in the book’s introduction. “It was meant as a taunt but became the challenge that animated this book: ‘You think you know me but you don’t.’”
