Mickelson None Too Happy With Ryan Ruffels

The first rule of playing golf with Phil Mickelson, is you don’t talk about about playing golf with Phil Mickelson.

Roughly two weeks ago, Australian golfer, Ryan Ruffels, broke onto the golf scene without ever swinging a club on the PGA TOUR.

You may recall the story Ruffels told of playing a round with Phil Mickelson, and one that, according to Ruffels, cost Lefty $5,000.  It caused quite a stir due to the fact that 1.) the golf world loves Phil Mickelson gambling stories, and 2.) Ruffles was still an amateur, possibly being recruited by Mickelson’s brother to play for Arizona State.  There are all sorts of potential violations involved in that scenario.

Later, the 17-year old Australian would recant most of the story, including the very Mickelsonian quote, “I don’t wake up this early to play for anything less than $2,500.”

Fast forward to yesterday at the ninth green of Torry Pines, North when a reporter, asked Mickelson about Ryan.

Q. You’ve been such an inspiration for younger players.  Talk about Ryan Ruffels and your relationship with him.

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, that’s an interesting one.  He’s a very nice person.  I met him a month ago, and we played for the first time.  He, he’s young, and he’s got some things to learn.

One of them is you don’t discuss certain things.  You don’t discuss specifics of what you play for.  And you certainly don’t embellish and create a false amount just for your own benefit.  So those things right there are — that’s high school stuff, and he’s going to have to stop doing that now that he’s out on the PGA TOUR.

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In the world of golf, this is a veteran golfer, a Hall of Fame golfer, basically lighting a kid up.

Also, just by bringing the story back up and offering such a scathing quote, Mickelson is levying a bit of punishment on Ruffels.  Ruffels, who clearly would like nothing more than for this story to go away, is also playing the Farmer’s Insurance Open this week on a sponsor’s exemption.  Which means he gets to answer all those questions again, plus a few more, for the next few days.

Cover Photo via Flickr