Ashley Perez says Phil Mickelson texted her under the cover of friendship, then showed her a naked photo of himself with an erection during the 2015 Barclays tournament week. Years later, when the story surfaced again, the old call between Mickelson, Pat Perez and Ashley Perez became the center of the question: what exactly happened that night?
It matters now because Pat Perez’s comments about Mickelson went public in November 2022, and that reopened a private story that had sat for years inside their circle. Ashley Perez said she was 27 when she married Pat Perez in 2014, and she described Mickelson’s messages as starting innocently enough before, in her telling, becoming something darker. She said he sent good morning texts and made her feel like she was being groomed.
The setting was a tournament week at Plainfield Country Club in Edison, NJ, with Mickelson staying nearby in a villa at Liberty National Golf Course. Ashley Perez said Mickelson called her, not Pat Perez, to say he had arranged for them to move to his villa. Pat Perez and Ashley Perez went there, stayed up drinking red wine with Mickelson on the patio, and Ashley Perez said he later showed her a full-body picture of himself naked with an erection while flexing one bicep. She also said he told her, “I’m going to leave my bedroom door open tonight. When Pat falls asleep I want you to come see me.”
The part that changed everything for Pat Perez came after the tournament ended. Ashley Perez said she did not tell him about the photo until the conclusion of the event, and he did not confront Mickelson directly. Instead, he told many people about what had allegedly happened, and Mickelson eventually apologized during a corporate outing at the Madison Club in La Quinta, California. But the apology did not close the matter. Pat Perez said on Claude Harmon’s podcast in November 2022 that Mickelson crossed a line and that he could not forgive him, and when those comments spread, Mickelson called again to apologize.
That later call is the sharpest window into the unresolved part of the story. Ashley Perez has a recording of the 26-minute phone call, and during it Mickelson moved between contrition and saying he did not remember the details of that night. When Pat Perez said Mickelson had shown a naked photo of himself to Ashley Perez, Mickelson replied, “You mean topless?” Perez shot back that forgetting was “a fucking problem.” Mickelson then apologized directly to both of them and said, “I can’t tell you how disgusted and embarrassed I am in myself.”
Phil Mickelson and Pat Perez have known each other since they were kids, and they were never close friends, only two San Diego natives with a long history and mutual respect. That makes the line Perez described harder to dismiss, not easier. What remains unanswered is why Mickelson felt comfortable texting Ashley Perez privately in the first place, and what he thought he was doing when he invited her toward his room that night.
