Mardy Fish on How Much $$$ He Was Willing to Lose Playing Golf vs Michael Jordan

Most people who get asked for a dream golf foursome name four legends and move on. Mardy Fish went to the bank first.

The story arrived after Fish tried to be polite. His opening pick for the foursome was Rich, on the grounds that the two of them had never played golf together. Rich corrected the record immediately. They had, in fact, won a charity event together. Rich still has the travel bag to prove it.

"You're totally right. I totally forgot about that," Fish said. "How could I forget about that?"

Rich supplied the answer. "Because I am a forgettable golfer."

With the host graciously removing himself from the field, Fish got serious. First pick, an eighteen-hole round with Jack Nicklaus. He has played nine holes with Nicklaus once and called it pretty special, which is the kind of understatement that tells you exactly how special it was.

Second pick came with a philosophy attached. "I love gambling when I play," Fish said. "Got to put something on it. Got to feel the stress."

Which is how we get to Michael Jordan, and to the detail that makes this whole segment.

Fish played with Jordan once. Before the round, he went to the bank and withdrew fifteen thousand dollars in cash. "I swear to God, this is a true story," he said. He had never done anything like that before. He had no idea what the stakes were going to be, so he set his own number in advance.

"I didn't want to play for that," Fish said, "but I was like, this is the amount that I'm comfortable losing. Not comfortable. I don't want to lose this, but it wouldn't change my life if this happened."

That is a remarkably clear-eyed way to walk onto a golf course, and it speaks to Jordan's reputation more than anything Fish could have said out loud. Rich, understandably, needed to sit in it for a second. You showed up to play golf with Michael Jordan, and in your bag was fifteen thousand dollars.

"I was prepared to lose to him," Fish said.

Then came the anticlimax, which is the funniest part. Jordan asked what he wanted to play for. Fish deferred, whatever you want to do, MJ. They settled on two hundred, two hundred, four hundred.

"And I went, thank God," Fish said.

He did not need the bankroll. He needed a wallet. Fish beat him, and on the sixteenth tee box Jordan laid four hundred dollars down and walked. "I don't owe anybody anything. Here's your money," Fish recalled him saying. Jordan did not want to finish the round. He did not like the game, or the fact that he was losing it.

Final tally on the most stressful cash withdrawal in the history of celebrity golf: Fish won four hundred bucks. The rest of that group, by the way, was not bad either. Luke Donald, who Fish called one of his favorite people, and Keegan Bradley, with Daniel Berger possibly rounding it out.

The fourth spot in the dream group went sideways in the best way. Fish has never met Tiger Woods and would obviously love to play with him, but he went outside the golf world instead and took Steph Curry.

"He's that athlete that is good at run, jump, sprint type stuff like LeBron James," Fish said, "but then can go over and is good at the handsy and feel type stuff."

Not all of it, though. Curry showed Fish his tennis serve motion. The scouting report was blunt. "It didn't look great," Fish said. "We can work on that."

The endorsement was otherwise total, and it extended past Curry himself to the people around him, including his dad and his brother Seth, who plays the American Century Championship. Fish and the Curry clan have a standing Wednesday round in Tahoe. This year the group included Jake Owen.

So the final foursome: Nicklaus, Jordan, and Curry. No cash withdrawal required.