Billy Walter is a legendary sports player known for decades for his big bets. In a Thursday interview with Brent Musburger, however, he acted more like a poker player when the topic of Phil Mickelson came up.
People who were hoping Walters would drop some kind of bombshell about his “six-year playing relationship” with the six-time Major champion must have left the 45-minute session on ViSN disappointed. Instead, Walters promised “it will be detailed in the book,” which hits stores August 15.
That’s not to say it wasn’t an entertaining interview, and that Walters wasn’t candid about a number of topics, including his time in prison after a 2017 conviction for insider trading. But Walters was clearly saving the juiciest bits of his life for his autobiography, Gamer: Secrets of a Life at Risk.
You can watch the entire interview here, but Mickelson’s stuff runs from 28:30 to 34 minutes:
So what did Walters says? First, he talked about meeting Mickelson at the 2006 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am:
Walters, who won the 2008 Pro-Am tournament at Pebble on an 11 handicap with PGA Tour pro Fredrik Jacobson, says he was “tit for tat” in cash games with Mickelson. This was in response to questions about rumors that Mickelson owed him large sums of money:
“As far as Phil owed me money, we had a playing relationship that lasted six years. From my perspective, I think it was more than that. I think we became friends.”
“Officially, I’m a convicted felon, I’m guilty of insider trading. But there are a number of things about this trial that didn’t go as they should have, that haven’t been disclosed to the public. And I’m just gonna put some things [in the book] that the public doesn’t know about, both my relationship with Phil and what happened in that trial. And I’ll let the public decide if I was guilty or innocent.”
When Musburger asked a true-false follow-up question about whether Walters thought he wouldn’t have gone to jail if Mickelson had testified at trial, Walters acknowledged that he believed it was true.
“I had a trial in New York and as a result the way things are, Phil and I don’t have the relationship we had today. But all of that will be detailed in the book, our relationship, the six-year play relationship we had. And the book gives me a chance to set the record straight about what happened in the Southern District of New York.
Walters’ autobiography is being written in collaboration with Armen Keteyian, co-author of Tiger Woods’ unauthorized 2018 biography. A press release on Wednesday promised “explosive details” about Walters’ relationship with Mickelson . Golf enthusiasts looking for these will therefore have to wait a few more months.
“It’s not a vanity book,” Walters told Musburger. “It’s a real book. And there are a lot of things in this book that I’m not proud of. But what is in this book, when the reader reads it, he will see that I have shared everything with him.”