Phil Mickelson ‘fired’ by brother as ‘interim assistant’ for Arizona St. golf team

Phil Mickelson is out of a job — his part-time job.

Mickelson is no longer helping his brother Tim as “interim assistant coach” for his alma mater Arizona State’s men’s golf program.

“Yes, I recently got fired from that position,” Mickelson said Wednesday at a news conference ahead of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

The five-time major winner was in the job two months. It wasn’t really a job, however, so much as a title that allowed Mickelson to do some recruiting for the Sun Devil program without attracting unwanted attention from the NCAA.

“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.”

The player in question is 16-year-old Ryan Ruffels, an American-born amateur living in Australia. Ruffels shared in early November that he had spoken with Mickelson about attending Arizona State. A few days later, Mickelson had a new title in his brother’s program.

With the recruiting calls made, Lefty was happy to step aside so a real coach could help his brother and get back to his full-time gig.

Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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