MEA CULPA

Biographer Slams Phil Mickelson’s ‘Duplicitous’ Excuse for Terrible Saudi Arabia Comments

The championship golfer said he was “deeply sorry” for his remarks, but added that they were shared with biographer Alan Shipnuck “out of context and without my consent.”

Reporter Alan Shipnuck has pushed back on golfing champion Phil Mickelson’s assertion that Shipnuck published Mickelson’s “off record” comments about the PGA Tour and a breakaway league organized by Saudi Arabian backers. Mickelson, 51, said Tuesday he was “deeply sorry” for his controversial remarks, in which he flippantly dismissed Saudi Arabia’s egregious track record of human rights abuses. But, he implied strongly, those remarks had been shared “out of context and without my consent.” Part of an excerpt from Shipnuck’s upcoming unauthorized biography about Mickelson, the comments drew swift condemnation online. Shipnuck responded to Mickelson’s apology on Tuesday, denying that his conversation with the golfer had been off-the-record. “Mickelson simply called me up and opened a vein,” Shipnuck wrote in a blog post. “To claim now that the comments were off-the-record is false and duplicitous.”