Every once in a while, a reader will write in with this existential conundrum: What’s up with Tiger and Phil?
It is beyond strange that two of golf’s most dominant figures over the past three decades have disappeared from the sport’s landscape and even its screen.
Woods’ latest update came courtesy of The people magazine. (Tell me.) The news was that the 15-time champion is in a residential treatment facility outside the United States for what appears to be a three-month stay to deal with his addiction issues. That return to a rehab center — he sought treatment at a Mississippi facility in 2010 for addictive behavior — came after his late March roadside arrest near his South Florida home. Woods is expected to complete treatment by the end of June, although he did, per The peoplereturned briefly to Florida after his girlfriend, Vanessa Trump, the former daughter-in-law of the current president, announced that she had breast cancer.
Tiger Woods is the last person who would want to turn into a character in a real-life version of As the World Turns,” but he has.
on wednesday, Golf Digest reported that Mickelson’s membership at The Farms Golf Club, his longtime and regular haunt in north San Diego County, had been revoked after “a club employee accused the six-time major champion of inappropriate contact with her before a round of golf.” Mickelson, for several months, has left public life because of, as Mickelson said on the eve of Mastersa “personal health issue” involving a family member. In the following stories of Golf Digest various media outlets have cited a statement from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department saying that an investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing on Mickelson’s part and that the office would investigate further if evidence materialized.
Neither Mickelson nor Woods are in the field at the US Open Shinnecock Hills next week. This is not at all surprising. Woods is 50 years old with a body compromised by multiple surgeries, the most complicated of them following his car crash in Los Angeles County in February 2021. Mickelson is nearly 56 years old and his performances at LIV Golf have been largely mediocre since league play began in 2022.
What is shocking is that he has neither been a Ryder Cup captain, nor a regular presence as a television pitchman, nor is he a gray eminence of the game, as Ben Hogan was in the 50s and beyond, as Arnold Palmer was, as Jack Nicklaus was and is. The Golf’s long-running succession plan is broken beyond repair here. What’s shocking is that we never see Tiger and Phil. They are gone.
Woods, reticent in his limited public appearances over the years, usually at sporting events, is on a number of PGA Tour committees and boards. But his pressing legal and mental health issues in the wake of his latest arrest have likely superseded those commitments. Mickelson, for years and decades, has been almost silly in his public life — his “Fireside with Phil” interview series and the rest. He had stunts, bits, comic diatribes. Those sides of the versatile left-handed golfer haven’t been seen in years, as he went from fun-loving Phil to renegade Phil to missing Phil.
Rick Reilly, in one 2008 ESPN columnwrote this:
Rooting for Tiger Woods is like rooting for Justin Timberlake to get lucky, Exxon to hit a gusher, Bill Gates to find a twenty on the sidewalk. It requires no imagination. It doesn’t take courage. What’s the point? It’s 1 in 5 he’ll win anyway, whether you cheer or not. It makes no difference to him. It’s like rooting for erosion.
Rooting for Phil Mickelson, on the other hand, is like rooting for the salmon to eat the bear. It takes trust. I need an apology. She takes Tums. Mickelson is a roller coaster in an earthquake. One shot will be so inspired that you will cover your mouth in amazement. The other will be so vague you’ll slap your forehead in disbelief. It’s like watching a blind guy walk through Hollywood and Vine. Your fist is in your mouth all the way.
I bring all this up because Woods and Mickelson will play back-to-back on Thursday and Friday at the US Open. You have to choose. You can’t root for both. It’s un-American.
That 2008 US Open was at Torrey Pines in San Diego, where Woods and Mickelson, children of Southern California, had played often, as children, as elite amateurs, as dominant professionals. Woods won that US Open in a playoff and, according to legend of the week, with a “broken leg.” (It was more like a hairline fracture, though Woods was clearly in deep pain.) Mickelson had a T18 finish.
The show “Tiger & Phil” it couldn’t go on forever and it didn’t. In November 2009, Woods hit a hydrant outside his home in a gated development near Orlando after a dispute with his then-wife, Elin Nordegren. After that event, his private life was exposed and his public life was never the same. The 9-iron that Nordegren used to smash the windows of Woods’ Cadillac Escalade after knocking over that front yard hydrant is one of those strange golf objects that is part of the game’s macabre lore, famous for all the wrong reasons.
In 2018, when the US Open was last held in Shinnecock HillsMickelson played hockey on the 13th green in Saturday’s round, turning his putter into a puck and his white Odyssey putter into a hockey stick, at least for one shot of the ball on the move. Curtis Strange, on the telecast, said then, “I’ve never seen anything like that from a world-class player in my life.” Strange’s real-time commentary is open to extrapolation to the off-course lives of both subjects here, Mickelson and Woods. It’s also true that the two golf giants have played and lived through an era of extreme scrutiny that Nicklaus and Palmer never imagined. Nicklaus has talked about it over the years. However: who would have guessed any of this in 2008? Mickelson’s flatstick, that Saturday at Shinnecock, was a blade, a cousin of the hockey stick. You remember the blade setters, right? As Woods used to say, Father Time is unbeatable. Dusk eventually arrives for every day in the sun.
Their talent is their talent. Woods, amazingly, won the 2019 Masters at age 43. (Nicklaus won it at 46 and people still talk about it.) Mickelson, amazingly, won the 2021 PGA Championship at age 50. (Palmer didn’t win the PGA Championship at all and people still talk about it like it was a missing tooth.) Both Woods and Mickelson earned those majors as chesty, physically imposing middle-aged men capable of hitting hitters while scratching at gum. (Winning while smoking, back then? That used to be common. But while chewing gum? Not really a thing, before Woods. Mickelson’s gum was bright blue.) Each found a way to turn back the hands of time. Each was wild in the win, in every way, including their post-tournament commentary. Now we hear from them mostly through elaborate statements on their social media platforms, or from those who speak for them.
This is an actual quote from the last one Golf Digest report regarding Mickelson’s situation with the employee at his now-former club: “”Any misunderstandings have been cleared up.”
That sentence would probably mean something if it had come directly from Mickelson, and it would mean a lot more if it had come from a club employee. But it comes from neither. It’s just another parsed statement by another PR person representing another famous person stuck in another bad place.
Phil was Phil talking about himself. As for Woods, his clubs did their best. Either way, it’s been years since we’ve seen them do their thing. Golf has moved on. The gaping hole between Arnie-Jack and Tiger-Phil will never be filled. A lot has happened, and we know a lot.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
