Well, that was fast.
Less than three months after being hired as an "interim assistant" golf coach at Arizona State, Phil Mickelson has been fired by the head coach -- who also happens to be his brother, Tim.
"Yes, I recently got fired from that position," Mickelson said Wednesday during a news conference at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
The position was never meant to be a long-term one, according to Yahoo! Sports. Rather, Mickelson was enlisted by his brother to help with the team's recruiting efforts.
"We had developed a plan to where I could call some recruits," Mickelson said. "We weren't really going to say anything and hadn't said anything for a few weeks until one of the players had tweeted it and it looked like there were some improprieties, which there weren't, so we had to publicly announce I was assistant coach; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to make the phone calls I had been making."
That player was Australian high school golfer Ryan Ruffels, who told the Sydney Morning Herald about receiving a call from Mickelson last fall.
"I thought one of my mates from school was giving me a prank call," Ruffels told the newspaper in November. "We chatted for an hour and I'm just starting to get some exposure to those big players and it's great."
With Tim in need of a "real assistant" at the beginning of the year, according to Mickelson, his services were no longer needed; hence, the hook from his brother.
