Tiger, Phil want faceoff
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are in negotiations to play a winner- takeall match for $ 10 million, according to a report Friday by Golf. com.
The report said Mickelson was hopeful the match would have taken place July 3 in Las Vegas, except that negotiations with a television network and corporate support could not be worked out in time.
Mickelson, who is playing at the Greenbrier tournament this week, said they are working on a different date.
“I thought it was done for the third, but obviously it wasn’t,” Mickelson said.
Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, declined to comment on the report.
Woods was involved in made- for- TV exhibitions some 15 years ago. They evolved from singles matches with David Duval and Sergio Garcia to team matches, one of them amixed- team exhibition. Mickelson was part of just one of those matches.
Mickelson playfully hinted at such a match when he and Woods were in the same group at The Players Championship.
There have been murmurs of some sort of exhibition between the two golfers going back to The Players Championship in May, when they were grouped for the first two rounds and Mickelson suggested they skip “the ancillary stuff of a tournament and just go head- tohead and just have kind of a high- stakes, winner- take- all match.”
When presented later with the idea, Woods didn’t shoot it down.
“I’m definitely not against that,” he said then. “We’ll play for whatever makes him uncomfortable.”
Although both players have amassed fortunes, Mickelson said the $ 10 million amount is enough to get their attention.
“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, 42, and Mickelson, 48, have had a long rivalry that dates to their junior golf days in Southern California. At times, their relationship has been frosty. The 2004 Ryder Cup when they were paired together — and lost both matches — often is cited as an example.