Tiger Woods says golf world misses Phil Mickelson at PGA Championship despite 'differences of opinions'
AP Photo/Matt York
- Tiger Woods says the golf world misses Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship.
- Mickelson hasn't played competitive golf since his inflammatory comments regarding the coming Saudi Golf League.
- Despite wishing Mickelson was competing, Woods said he disagreed with what his rival said about the PGA Tour.
This week as the best golfers in the world compete in the PGA Championship at Southern Hills, the defending champion won't be playing.
On Friday the tournament announced that Phil Mickelson, who in 2021 became the oldest major champion in golf history with his win at the PGA Championship, would not be teeing it up this year.
Mickelson has not played competitive golf since his incendiary comments on the upcoming Saudi Golf League were made public earlier in the year.
At his press conference on Tuesday, Mickelson's lifelong rival Tiger Woods said that Lefty would be missed this year.
"It's always disappointing when the defending champion is not here," Woods told reporters.
Still, Woods took time to make clear that he disagreed with Mickelson's stance against the PGA Tour.
"Phil has said some things that I think a lot of us who are committed to the Tour, and committed to the legacy of the Tour, have pushed back against," Woods said. "He's taken some personal time. We all understand that.
"I think that some of his views on how the Tour could be run, should be run — there's been a lot of disagreement there. But as we all know, as a professional, we miss him being out here. He's a big draw for the game of golf. He's just taking his time, and we all wish him the best when he comes back. Obviously we're going to have differences of opinions of how he sees the Tour. We'll go from there."
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Even before his comments about the Saudi government became public, Mickelson had already aligned himself against the PGA Tour on several fronts, arguing that the Tour did not compensate its top players appropriately, and held back their earning potential by restricting players' use of their own media rights.
"It's not public knowledge, all that goes on," Mickelson said in February, per Golf Digest. "But the players don't have access to their own media. If the tour wanted to end any threat [from Saudi or anywhere else], they could just hand back the media rights to the players. But they would rather throw $25 million here and $40 million there than give back the roughly $20 billion in digital assets they control. Or give up access to the $50-plus million they make every year on their own media channel."
Mickelson went even further speaking with Alan Shipnuck in the interview that ultimately led to his extended disappearance from the sport, comparing the PGA Tour to a dictatorship.
"The Tour likes to pretend it's a democracy, but it's really a dictatorship," Mickelson told Shipnuck. "They divide and conquer. The concerns of the top players are very different from the guys who are lower down on the money list, but there's a lot more of them. They use the top guys to make their own situation better, but the top guys don't have a say."
In his comments at the PGA Championship, Woods invoked the "legacy" of the PGA Tour, and while he did not mention the breakaway Saudi league, now known as LIV Golf, by name, he implied that he was against tarnishing the legacy of what the Tour has built.
"He has his opinion on where he sees the game of golf going. I have my viewpoint on how I see the game of golf. I have supported the Tour, my foundation has run events on the Tour for a number of years," Woods said.
"I just think what Jack and Arnold have done, in starting the Tour, breaking away from the PGA of America and starting our Tour, I just think that there's a legacy to that. I've been playing out here for a number of years, for a couple decades, and I think there's a legacy to it. I still think that the Tour has so much to offer. So much opportunity. Yes, I understand that there are different viewpoints, but I believe in legacy, I believe in major championships, I believe in big events, comparisons to historical figures of the past. There's plenty of money out here. The Tour is growing. But it's like any other sport, it's like tennis — you've got to go out there and earn it. You have to go out there and play for it. We have the opportunity to go ahead and do it. It's just not guaranteed up front."
Woods added that he has not reached out to Mickelson since his withdrawal from the golfing world.
"I don't know what he's going through," Woods said. "But I know that the comments he made about the Tour and the way that it should be run and could be run and should be run differently and all the different financials that could have happened, I just have a very different opinion on that, so no, I have not reached out to him."
Woods tees off in the first round of the PGA Championship Thursday morning at 9:11 a.m. ET, alongside Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy in the most star-studded grouping of the opening rounds.