USA TODAY International Edition
Phil calls Tiger to tee up before Players
Woods retorts with ‘big picture,’ titles
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Phil Mickelson broke out the needle.
Tiger Woods responded with a hammer.
Ahead of the first two rounds of The Players Championship, where the marquee group of Mickelson, Woods and Rickie Fowler will have everybody’s attention, Mickelson on Tuesday tried to goad Woods into a mano-a-mano clash of the titans during his meeting with reporters.
“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-stake, winner-take-all match,” Mickelson said. “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.”
A few hours later, Woods teed up his retort.
“I’m definitely not against that,” Woods said. “We’ll play for whatever makes him uncomfortable.”
It was the latest back-and-forth between the two best players of their generation, who have been needling each other for more than 20 years. Woods has always had the upper hand in these exchanges, using just two words, as he did again on Tuesday, to shut Mickelson down.
“Big picture,” Woods said, referring to his 79 PGA Tour titles and 14 majors to Mickelson’s 43 Tour titles and five majors.
“It’s going to be fun playing with him again,” Woods said. “Phil and I have a great banter. We give each other the needle. We always have. We have an opportunity to play against each other again on the first day when the gun blows. I enjoy either competing with him on the first or second day or if it’s the last day. It’s always been a blast, and he’s one hell of a competitor, and it’s always going to be a challenge to try and beat him.”
The last time the two played in the same group came in the first two rounds of the 2014 PGA Championship. In all, Woods and Mickelson, who have combined for 122 PGA Tour titles and 19 majors, have been in the same group 36 times spread over 25 tournaments.
They are 16-16-4 head-to-head, with Woods averaging 69.66 strokes to Mickelson’s 69.88. Woods has won seven tournaments in which he played with Mickelson at some time during the event; Mickelson has won twice.
“Fifteen years ago my record against him sucked, and now it’s OK,” he said. “I’m doing better as time has gone on.”
The only time the two have played together on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass came in the third round of the 2001 Players Championship, when Woods made his “better than most, better than most, better than most,” 60foot birdie putt on the 17th en route to the title.
That victory came during a stretch spread over two years when Woods won 12 of 24 tournaments worldwide, including all four major championships. A stretch Mickelson will never forget.
“It was the most remarkable golf in the history of the game, and I think unrepeatable,” Mickelson said. “I think it was that good. I look at 2000 as being kind of the bench mark at the U.S. Open as being the greatest golf I’ve ever witnessed and I believe ever has been played. And it sucked to have to play against him. It really did.
“You look at it, and you say, ‘How am I going to beat this?’ There was a stretch there that it was so impressive that it was hard to imagine that it was actually happening.
“The guys today look back, and they say, come on, how much better could he have been and so forth, and it just goes to show you that they weren’t there to witness it.”