Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have spent the majority of their careers hitting shots against one another. But with the two stars on opposite sides of golf’s civil war between the PGA Tour and LIV, they’re now taking shots at each other.
Wednesday was Mickelson’s turn.
Woods, appearing at his Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, where he was set to compete before withdrawing on Monday, was asked if players on the Tour owe Mickelson an apology for all the criticism he took for bolting for Saudi-backed LIV Golf when it was the emergence of the rival faction that resulted in a dramatic increase in prize money for Tour players.
“No, absolutely not, no,” Woods said. “We took out an enormous loan during the pandemic in which that, if we had another year of the pandemic, our Tour would only be sustained for another year. So we took out an enormous loan. It worked, it paid off in our benefit, hence we were able to use that money to make the increases that we’ve made.”
Mickelson took to Twitter to fire back, noting elements from the Tour’s 2018 tax returns.
“1.6 billion in stocks 700 million in cash 1.15 billion in non liquid assets,” the 52-year-old six-time major champion wrote. “This is from the non profit section. The for profit section hasn’t been stated since 2012 but was more than the non profit part at that time. This can all be googled.”
Per Sports Illustrated, the Tour said that it didn’t take out a loan to deal with the pandemic in 2020. Rather, it used reserves and “mitigating actions” and would have seen a significant reduction in reserves without the sport returning to action in June 2020.
The Tour also said, per SI, that Woods might have been referencing that reserves would have dipped below $100 million without golf resuming in 2020.
It also wasn’t the first time Mickelson has taken a dig at the Tour over financial matters.
In Mickelson’s now-infamous interview with his biographer, Alan Shipnuck, Mickelson claimed the Tour was “already sitting on an $800 million cash stockpile.”
“How do you think they’re funding the [Player Impact Program]?” he said at the time. “Or investing $200 million in the European Tour? The Tour is supposed to be a nonprofit that distributes money to charity. How the [hell] is it legal for them to have that much cash on hand? The answer is, it’s not.”
Meanwhile, LIV Golf on Wednesday announced three more tournaments for its schedule with stops in Mexico, Singapore and Spain in 2023. They will play a total of 14 events next year, beginning in February.
Woods, while not playing in this week’s tournament in the Bahamas because of plantar fasciitis, does still intend to play in the latest iteration of “The Match” on Dec. 10 alongside Rory McIlroy, with the two taking on Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. He is also slated to again play with his son Charlie in the PNC Championship Dec. 18-19 in Orlando.
