Mickelson’s outrageous sports betting laid bare in Walters’ book

Phil Mickelson wagered more than $1 billion on sports the past three decades, his gambling losses approached $100 million, and he tried to place a $400,000 bet on the Ryder Cup, according to an upcoming book by renowned professional sports bettor Billy Walters.

In an excerpt from the book “Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk,” Walters, a Las Vegas businessman and philanthropist, detailed Mickelson’s sports betting history and his relationship with the PGA Tour star.

In September 2012, Walters wrote that Mickelson called him from Medinah Country Club outside Chicago, where the six-time major champion was playing in the Ryder Cup between the United States and Europe, and asked Walters to place a $400,000 wager for him on the U.S. team to win.

Walters said he was shocked.

“Have you lost your (expletive) mind?,” he told Mickelson. “Don’t you remember what happened to Pete Rose?”

The former Cincinnati Reds manager was banned from baseball for betting on his own team.

“You’re seen as a modern-day Arnold Palmer,” Walters said. “You’d risk all that for this? I want no part of it.”

Walters said he has no idea whether Mickelson placed the bet elsewhere. The wager would’ve been a loser, as the Europeans erased a 10-6 deficit on the final day of singles matches to pull off the greatest comeback in Ryder Cup history, aka the “Miracle at Medinah.” Mickelson’s loss to Justin Rose contributed to the stunning defeat.

Walters said he met Mickelson at the 2006 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. At another pro-am in 2008, Mickelson asked him about forming a betting partnership.

“I hear you do partnerships,” Mickelson said.

“I do. But only if someone has access to places I can’t bet,” Walters replied. “Or places where they can bet more money than me.”

According to the excerpt, Mickelson had both, and they eventually entered into a gambling partnership that lasted five years. Walters, widely regarded as the most successful sports bettor of all time, had relatively low limits because of his reputation compared to Mickelson, who enabled him to at least double his limits. So Walters provided the picks, Mickelson placed the bets, and they split everything 50-50.

“Phil said he had two offshore accounts that would take big action from him,” Walters wrote. “In all the decades I’ve worked with partners and beards, Phil had accounts as large as anyone I’d seen. You don’t get those types of accounts without betting millions of dollars.”

Walters said he learned more about Mickelson’s sports gambling from two very reliable sources. They said it was nothing for him to bet a $20,000 five-team parlay on the NBA or $100,000 or $200,000 on football, basketball and baseball.

Based upon Walters’ detailed betting records and records provided by the sources, in a five-year span between 2010 and 2014, Mickelson bet $220,000 to win $200,000 on 858 occasions and wagered $110,000 to win $100,000 a total of 1,115 times. (The sum of those wagers was more than $311 million.)

In 2011 alone, he made 3,154 bets — an average of nearly nine per day. On one day alone in June 2011, he made 43 bets on baseball games, resulting in $143,500 in losses.

“Phil liked to gamble as much as anyone I’ve ever met,” Walters wrote. “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.”

Mickelson has won more than $96 million in PGA Tour prize money and reportedly signed a multiyear contract with LIV Golf for $200 million. According to Forbes, Mickelson also has earned more than $800 million off the course in his career.

Walters estimated Mickelson’s gambling losses to be close to $100 million and that he wagered a total of more than $1 billion.

“The only other person I know who surpassed that kind of volume is me,” Walters wrote.

In June 2022, Mickelson told Sports Illustrated that his gambling “got to a point of being reckless and embarrassing” and that he needed to address his “addiction.”

More than once throughout their betting partnership, Walters, 77, wrote that he tried to counsel Mickelson, 53, to help him avoid some of the same issues that plagued him as a younger man.

“I want to make clear that I’m the last person to criticize someone for an addiction to anything,” Walters wrote.

Mickelson and Walters ended their betting partnership in 2014 after they learned of a federal investigation into stock trades they’d made.

In April 2017, Walters was convicted on 10 counts of insider trading and sentenced to five years in prison. He believes that he could have avoided prison had Mickelson testified in his trial.

“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 wrote. “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.

“The outcome cost me my freedom, tens of millions of dollars and a heartbreak I still struggle with daily. While I was in prison, my daughter committed suicide — I still believe I could have saved her if I’d been on the outside.”

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on Twitter.