Tiger, Mickelson in talks for US$10 mln golf showdown

MIAMI: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are in talks to stage a US$10 million winner-take-all 18hole golf showdown, according to a report on the Golf.com website.

Plans to stage the made-for-television event on July 3 in Las Vegas fell through, according to the report, but representatives for 14-time major champion Woods and five-time major winner Mickelson remain committed to making it happen.

“We’re working on a different date,” Mickelson said. “I thought it was done for the third but obviously it wasn’t.”

Mickelson, a 48-year-old lefthander, and Woods, a 42-year-old with 79 US PGA titles who hasn’t won an event since 2013, played together in a rare practice round at Augusta National ahead of the Masters in April. They were also paired together in May for the first two rounds of the Players Championship.

“Why don’t we just bypass all the ancillary stuff of a tournament and just go head-to-head and just have kind of a highstakes, winner-take-all match,” Mickelson said at the Florida event.

“Now, I don’t know if he wants a piece of me, but I just think it would be something that would be really fun for us to do and I think there would be a lot of interest in it if we just went straight to the final round.”

Talks were well under way for just such a matchup, according to the report, with Woods playing along, saying, “I’m definitely not against that. We’ll play for whatever makes him uncomfortable.”

Mickelson says with so much money on the line, even millionaires will be out of their comfort zone.

“It’s a ridiculous amount of money,” Mickelson said. “No matter how much money you have, this amount will take both of us out of our comfort zone.”

Woods ranks 16th on the 2018 Forbes magazine list of the world’s top moneymaker athletes with US$43.3 million, topping all golfers, with Mickelson six spots lower overall and second among golfers at US$41.3 million.

Mickelson said he and Woods hope to play a couple of exhibitions a year worldwide, potentially joining forces to face global rivals such as Rory McIlroy and Ian Poulter. The interaction between Woods and Mickelson, captured on microphones, would be part of the attraction.

“You will hear a lot of the comments that you don’t hear on regular TV. We both like to talk smack, and we both have fun with what we’re doing.

“And the fact that this isn’t an official tournament, that it’s just a head-to-head match, you’ll hear some of the little nuances, some of the little things that you don’t normally pick up,” Mickelson said.

Mickelson knows, however, that Woods has bragging rights in almost every category in golf history, his 14 major titles and 79 career US PGA triumphs each second on the all-time lists.

Why don’t we just bypass all the ancillary stuff of a tournament and just go head-to-head and just have kind of a high-stakes, winner-take-all match.

— Phil Mickelson