Pat Perez Blasts Tiger Woods Over Comments On LIV Golf

Pat Perez has blasted former PGA Tour colleague, Tiger Woods, after the Hall of Famer shared his opinion of LIV Golf back in July.

Speaking on Claude Harmon III’s podcast - Son Of A Butch, Perez described Woods' comments as "one of the stupidest things I think he has said". The response from Perez was in relation to Woods’ thoughts on LIV Golf, after he was quizzed about any ‘temptation’ to join the rebel Tour.

Woods fired back in an interview prior to The 150th Open Championship and questioned the incentive to play on a Tour that offers money regardless of a player's finishing position, something the PGA Tour doesn't offer.

Speaking at St Andrews, Tiger stated: “... but what these players are doing for guaranteed money, what is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt? You’re just getting paid a lot of money up front and playing a few events and playing 54 holes. They’re playing blaring music and have all these atmospheres that are different.”

Perez, who made his name on the PGA Tour as a permanent fixture on their leaderboards for over 20 years before moving to LIV, completely disagreed with the comments made by Woods, as did Perez’s swing coach, Harmon.

“The money aspect of it, for me, it’s so interesting to watch people talk about that, fixate on that, but the football stadiums in the NFL are filled,” Harmon stated, before adding “baseball stadiums, people go watch. Basketball, people go watch. They’re now paying college athletes. The colleges in America, you know, the money that Alabama brings in for amateur football, not even professional football. And nobody has any problem with any of that. And then obviously Tiger Woods coming out and talking about where is the incentive to practice and play with guaranteed money… “

What was Perez's response you may ask? Well, he simply uttered “that’s the stupidest s**t I have ever heard of in my life," before adding: “That’s one of the stupidest things I think he has said. The incentive is the fact that last place is 120,000, first place is four million. You cannot win four million on the PGA Tour. 

"Now, next year you might; they finally got the perks. But last time I checked, he signed a $40 million deal right out of college, was flying on the Nike jet. He found incentive. He could have shut it down right then. 

“He did pretty good with all the guarantees up front,” Harmon chirped, as he also stated "he had a lot of guarantees. You know what, and he was the hottest thing. He’s made so much money off the course, he found incentive to go. But again, he only played how many tournaments. He didn’t go — I never saw him at John Deere, never saw him supporting all these events. He played in the Majors, he played in the WGCs and that was it. He played Torrey. Never played Riv. But he’s worth every dime. In fact, like I said, he’s two billion short of where he should be, I think.”

Perez, who made $8 million on his LIV Golf debut, wasn't mincing his words throughout the interview, with the American revealing the extent of his disdain for Phil Mickelson, admitting he "cannot forgive" the six-time Major winner's past actions.

Although he didn't explain exactly why he feels hatred for the six-time Major winner, Perez referred back to an interview with Colt Knost back in March, where he said the 52-year-old tried to get players to join the breakaway series “behind everyone’s back” so he could secure a “big golden paycheque.”