It’s no secret that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have never been friends, even before Mickelson left for LIV Golf a few years ago.
There has always been a rivalry between the two in which Tiger has won most of the time. So when Mickelson said that he spoke to Woods while they were at the British Open, it surprised some.
“We said hi,” Mickelson said (via the Golf Channel), after shooting a 72 in the third round. “Yeah, we said hi, but we were both preparing. It’s not like we’re going to sit there and chat. But we said hello, yeah.”
When asked about the possibility of the pair working together given the PGA and LIV Golf merger situation, Mickelson didn’t say no.
“I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see.I don’t know about that stuff,” Mickelson continued. “I’m not involved. I’m not sitting in those rooms. I am enjoying where I’m at and what I’m doing and playing. I’ll let other people figure that stuff out.”
There have been a lot of strained relationships between LIV and PGA golfers since some of the top names in the sport left the tour.
Another relationship that has gone cold for Tiger recently is with Bryson DeChambeau. Unlike with Mickelson, Woods and DeChambeau were friends but have barely communicated since he decided to leave for LIV Golf.
Woods apparently contacted him as well, congratulating him on his recent U.S. Open win.
“It is the first communication,” DeChambeau said Thursday, “but I’ll say that he’s a competitor and I have a lot of respect for him. I’m sure that winning two U.S. Opens definitely helped, I guess, for him coming up and saying congrats. I don’t know what his position is, but it was very thoughtful and I was appreciative of it.”
Woods may be trying to mend a few fences because of the pending merger between the two tours and it seems like it may be working.
Tiger also tried to get in touch with friend and business partner Rory McIlroy. Woods said this week he tried to contact McIlroy to comfort him over his loss at the U.S. Open, but McIlroy had changed his number and didn’t know that Woods tried to contact him.
Once he found out, however, he was grateful that Woods tried to reach him.
“Tiger has been nothing but incredible to me over the course of my career in the good moments and the bad. He sent me an incredible message after St Andrews in 2022,” McIlroy said.
“It means a lot. It means a lot that he reached out. Actually, it means a lot that he waited a few days to reach out, which, if he hadn’t waited that long, I probably would have gotten it. But I caught up with him earlier. It’s always nice when your hero and the guy that you had on your bedroom wall is reaching out and offering words of encouragement.”
Maybe as Woods is getting older, he’s becoming wiser and friendlier since he doesn’t have the “me against the world” mentality he had when he was younger.
It’s quite apparent that he is still looked up to by a lot of the younger golfers who still seek his advice and guidance.
