The stakes have changed and their games have declined. One has a brittle body and the other has a shattered image. They have won only two of the last 41 majors. But the Tiger-Phil rivalry is hotter and more meaningful than it’s ever been. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are probably done battling each for green jackets, but now they are wrestling for the future of the sport. Of course they are.
Woods joined the PGA Tour policy board Tuesday, a move that officially gives him more power but effectively confirms he already had it. The PGA Tour is trying to decide how to strengthen itself and potentially crush Mickelson’s upstart LIV tour, and Woods will be in the meetings, trying to get one more victory over his rival.
The PGA Tour’s framework agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is vague in many ways, but clear in a crucial one: If they can get the business stuff squared away, the Tour will have the power to run the sport.
That means if they reach a final agreement, the PGA Tour can kill LIV … and that means the future of Phil Mickelson’s breakaway tour is largely in Tiger Woods’s hands now.
The sun should be setting on Woods by now, but in golf, he is the sun. Never mind that he can barely walk, or that he plays so rarely that “part-time golfer” seems hyperbolic. When he speaks, most players hang on every word—except for the ones who have Phil in their other ear.
Mickelson continues to work every angle to get the public on his side. He continues to push the idea that LIV won the battle, that LIV is thriving, that no LIV golfer has any interest in returning to the PGA Tour. After LIV’s Brooks Koepka won the PGA, Mickelson claimed “Love LIV or hate it, it’s the best way/Tour to be your best in the majors.” LIV proceeded to put two players in the top 10 of the U.S. Open and two in the top 20 at the British, but hey, folks, forget all that, Phil has coffee he’d like to sell you.
If you gave Mickelson truth serum, he’d probably talk you into taking it yourself. But for all his selling, and regardless of what PIF head Yasir Al-Rumayyan is telling LIV players, LIV’s future is in serious doubt. Al-Rumayyan agreed to drop lawsuits and let the PGA Tour control what happens to LIV in exchange for a piece of the business and a seat at the table in golf’s most exclusive clubhouses.
Mickelson worked hard to create LIV. Woods has used his rare public forums in the last 18 months to stand up for the Tour.
Mickelson has publicly shared his antipathy and mistrust of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. Woods just announced in a Tour press release that Monahan “has my confidence moving forward.”
You don’t have to ask Phil Mickelson what Woods does with a lead entering the final round. He knows. We all know.
For much of their primes, Mickelson and Woods were genuine, I-have-zero-interest-in-eating-dinner-with-you rivals. Woods seemed to prefer it that way. Everybody in the whole world wanted to be his friend; why did he need the second-best player of his generation to be one?
Their personalities were so different that it was hard to imagine them as buddies, anyway. Phil is an ingratiator. Tiger is a terminator. Phil was a fearless gambler. Tiger was a brilliant tactician. Phil was media-friendly. Tiger, back then, was highly suspicious of reporters.
They made peace for a while. Aging (and mutual business interests) brought perspective. They played a practice round together at Augusta National. They staged made-for-TV matches. But when Phil went all-in on LIV, it was game on again.
Woods no longer sees every microphone and most other great players as his enemies. But if he thinks a battle is worth his energy, he remains one of the great competitors in history—and he absolutely believes in this one.
Woods was a driving force behind the famous meeting in Delaware last year that reconfigured the Tour. His closest confidants among young players have been vocally opposed to LIV. The agency that has represented him for a long time, Excel, strongly advised its clients to stay put on the PGA Tour.
Many people have understandably objected to LIV because it is funded by the brutal Saudi regime. Woods has consistently voiced a different objection: that the PGA Tour is the best venue for the world’s best golfers, and LIV made the game worse. This is an important distinction, because if the Tour policy board is comfortable doing business with the Saudis, then finishing the deal is appealing. It would give the Tour the power to squash LIV.
It’s Tiger vs. Phil, all over again. Phil Mickelson started this latest squabble. Tiger Woods can finish it.
