Mickelson Suggests High Stakes Match With Woods

Could we see a return of Shell's Wonderful World of Golf?

Mickelson Suggests High Stakes Match With Woods

Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods play together competitively for the first time since the 2014 USPGA Championship this week at TPC Sawgrass.

The duo, who have a combined 19 majors and 122 PGA Tour victories between them, recently played together in a practice round at The Masters and appear to have a newly found friendship in recent times.

Mickelson was speaking about playing with Woods in his pre-tournament press conference and joked about having a high-stakes game with the 14-time major winner.

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“As I look at the cover of the newspaper and the pairing is on there and the excitement that's been going on around here, it gets me thinking: Why don't we just bypass all the ancillary stuff of a tournament and just go head-to-head and just have kind of a high-stake, winner-take-all match,” he said..

“Now, I don't know if he wants a piece of me, but I just think it would be something that would be really fun for us to do, and I think there would be a lot of interest in it if we just went straight to the final round.”

Whilst it may have been said as a joke, this is an exciting statement for golf fans... could we see a return of something similar to Shell's Wonderful World of Golf?

Mickelson vs Woods in an 18 hole match at TPC Sawgrass, or Pebble Beach, or Sunningdale. How good would that be? Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

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Woods was then asked about Mickelson's quotes and he seemed to be up for it.

“I’m definitely not against that,” he said. “We’ll play for whatever makes him uncomfortable.”

Sponsors, Shell, the PGA Tour, whoever... get this done!

Tiger also spoke about his relationship with Phil and how it is now blossoming thanks to the pair's involvement at the most recent Ryder Cup and Presidents Cups where Woods was a vice-captain.

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“Phil and I have great banter,” Woods said.

“We give each other the needle. We always have. But I think our relationship has certainly gotten a lot closer with me being a vice-captain the last couple teams, sitting there and having lengthy conversations with him about things. Not just the pairings, but just about things in general.”

Woods and Mickelson tee off at 6.52pm on Thursday alongside Rickie Fowler. See all the round one tee times here.

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