Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods were once friends. However, come 1998, a bet and a bad joke launched what people would come to know as the greatest rivalry of golf. While playing a practice round ahead of the Nissan Open at the Valencia Country Club in California, the duo had bet $500 dollars, with Woods ultimately losing. The catch, though, was when his opponent celebrated by placing photocopies of his winning $100 bills in Mr. T’s locker, with a note that read, “Just wanted you to know Benji and his friends are very happy in their new home.” Well, safe to say, Woods didn’t take it lightly. The result?
The duo didn’t play another practice round together for a staggering 20 years, until the 2018 Masters. While Mickelson was a true “senior” as they call it, having joined the sports five years prior, and racked up nine PGA Tour wins by the time Woods joined in 1996, it didn’t take much time for the latter to catch up. As things stand, the 49-year-old has 82 PGA Tour wins (tied-1st all-time), and 110 as a professional. Mickelson, on the other hand, stands at 45 PGA Tour wins (tied-8th all-time), and 57 tournament victories as a professional. We clearly see a winner, don’t we?
Perhaps that’s the reason why the conflict has since dampened if not completely gone, as more apparent by Woods’ words. “That’s just part of the deal. I have enjoyed competing and playing against him. We’ve been doing it for 20-plus years. But I’ve really enjoyed it. And I think that there will certainly be some time talking involved and some snide comments and trying to get in one of his head. But the end of the day, he understands who has more wins,” he said during an Inside the NBA appearance in November, 2018. Mickelson, too, long recognized Woods’s influence on the game, and in a recent open discussion, he finally acknowledged the true debt he owes to his greatest rival…
In a recent interview on the Australian Golf Digest YouTube channel, the veteran discussed his career, the evolution of golf fitness, and how Tiger Woods was the inspiration behind it. Talking about Mickelson’s fitness regime, the host asked, “You’ve never looked better, and I mean that. Do you have regrets, maybe not getting into this a lot earlier in your career? Have you ever pondered, ‘Maybe could I have won even more’, back at your prime?”
To this, the golf star disclosed in a moment of shocking candor that when he first began playing professional golf, health was not even taken into account. He remarked, “I do wish I had dove in and learned more about nutrition. When I started playing golf though fitness wasn’t even an issue.” “It wasn’t until Tiger came along— he was years behind me—that it really got to be accepted and then got to grow,” he further added.
Mickelson attributed the sport’s change to Woods’s dedication to fitness. He admitted that Dave Phillips and Greg Rose co-founded the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) as a result of the growing popularity of fitness training in golf. Since then, TPI has grown to be an essential component of professional golfers’ training plans, emphasizing injury prevention and routines tailored to the sport. Mickelson further explained, “[With] the formation of TPI with Dave Phillips and Greg Rose…we really started to train for golf specific as well as injury prevention. When I started working out with my trainer in 2003, 21 years ago, we went into it with the idea of elongating my career rather than trying to perform great for a short period of time.”
At the age of 54, Mickelson has remained injury-free, which is uncommon in professional sports. He acknowledged that he could have done more in terms of diet, but he was grateful that he had made the proper choices in terms of his physical conditioning. “I wish I had dived in a little bit more on nutrition—I didn’t. I don’t think it would have led to my winning more or anything, but it sure would have been nice to be accountable for my health at a younger age,” he remarked.
For Kultida Woods, Phil Mickelson was more deserving of the nickname “hefty” and not “lefty”. As the two top golfing stars in their time, both Mickelson and Tiger Woods exuded a fierce rivalry finely balanced on ego, competition, and “disdain”—the last word being more of how Woods felt toward his fierce rival.
Son of a Vietnamese veteran father and a Thai mother, the three-time US Open Winner was aware (and perhaps angry and jealous?) that Mickelson was more naturally talented than he was. As golf writer Alan Shipnuck noted, “Tiger knew that Phil was the most naturally gifted player ever to hold a golf club. But Tiger looked at him with disdain. He couldn’t fathom having that much ability but not putting in the time to be great.” Now add to that the “20 extra pounds” that the six-time US Open runner weighed as opposed to Tiger’s strict dietary regime, and it explains why Kultida might have been irked. However, decades later, Mickelson’s candid remarks highlight the undeniable impact Woods had not only on his career but on the sport as a whole.
Phil Mickelson’s Exciting BellSouth Classic Win in 2005
“I felt like I kind of gave the tournament away,” Mickelson remarked in the aftermath, sounding relieved. “But I was able to somehow hang in there and get lucky.” This triumph demonstrated Mickelson’s tenacity and capacity to perform well under duress in addition to adding another title to his resume.
