Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson feud embarrassed USA and led to landslide European win
The love-hate rivalry between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson fascinated golf fans for decades.
It began way back in 1998, when the pair played a practice round ahead of the Nissan Open at the Valencia Country Club in California.
Woods and Mickelson had agreed to a bet, with the winner taking a $500 prize from the other.
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On that day, it was the latter who won.
Mickelson celebrated by putting photocopies of his five winning $100 bills into Woods’ locker, accompanied by a note that read: “Just wanted you to know Benji and his friends are very happy in their new home.”
A young Woods was furious, and two of America’s most exciting pros wouldn’t play another practice round together for two decades.
They finally did, 20 years on, at the 2018 Masters.
But long before they reconciled at Augusta, Woods and Mickelson were paired together at the Ryder Cup in 2004.
“I felt like history needed it. I felt like the fans needed it. And, most of all, I felt like Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods needed it,” US captain Hal Sutton said of his decision to put the two rivals together.
However, because of their complex relationship, the pairing did not turn out to be the masterstroke that Sutton had hoped.
In fact, it was a spectacular failure..
Ryder Cup pairing backfires on opening day
Despite being the two highest ranked players in the field at the 2004 Ryder Cup, Woods and Mickelson had not been paired together in the previous three editions.
Tiger, who was still the youngest player on the team, had already generated a reputation for being a difficult player to find the right partner for.
Before arriving at Oakland Hills Country Club in Michigan, he had already teed it up with eight different partners.
Mickelson would be his ninth, and arguably his worst yet.
The pairing lost both of their matches on the Friday, and were first defeated by in the morning fourball, 2&1, by Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington.
But the real trouble came in the afternoon, when Woods and Mickelson were asked to play alternate shot against Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood.
Alternate shot is a 2v2 matchup in which each team plays one ball, alternating shots between the two players until the ball has been holed.
The problem in 2004? One would need to use a ball that wasn’t particularly suited to their game.
Why did Woods and Mickelson fail in alternate shot match?
“We were told two days before that we were playing together,” Mickelson said of his pairing with Woods, more than a decade on from 2004.
“And that gave us no time to work together and prepare.
“(Woods) found out the year before when we played at the Presidents Cup in 2003 that the golf ball I was playing was not going to work for him.
“He plays a very high-spin ball and I play a very low-spin ball, and we had to come up in two days with a solution.”
Mickelson went on to detail his attempts to practice with Woods’ balls, just days ahead of the Ryder Cup.
“I grabbed a couple dozen of his balls, I went off to the side and tried to learn his golf ball in a four or five-hour session,” he said.
“And it forced me to stop my preparation for the tournament, to stop chipping and stop putting and stop sharpening my game and stop learning the golf course in an effort to crash-course and learn a whole different golf ball that we were going to be playing.
“In the history of my career, I have never ball-tested two days prior to a major. I’ve never done it. It doesn’t allow me to play my best.
“What allows me to play my best is to learn the course, sharpen my touch on the greens, sharpen my chipping out of the rough and ball striking and so forth.
“Instead, I’m taking four or five hours, and I’m out trying to learn another ball to allow us to play our best.
“Had we known a month in advance, we might have been able to make it work. I think we probably would have made it work. But we didn’t know until two days prior.”
When it eventually came around on Friday afternoon, the match went to the 18th hole, where Clarke and Westwood won 1-up.
US embarrassed in big Ryder Cup loss
With what was supposed to be America’s top pair falling, Europe led 6½ -1½ after the opening day, while only Chris DiMarco and Jay Haas won a full point for the home team.
By Saturday afternoon, the gap had widened, and the visitors took an 11-5 lead into the singles, eventually winning the Ryder Cup by a massive 18½ to 9½.
It was the largest winning margin by a European team in the history of the event, and the largest by either side since 1981.
The 18½-9½ loss was also the largest margin of defeat for the US since the competition started in 1927.
All in all, Mickelson went 1-3 at the 2004 Ryder Cup, and Woods was 2-3.
Sutton’s decision to pair the two together was heavily criticized in the aftermath of the event, while Woods and Mickelson were never paired together again.
“I felt like the world of golf would be better off if Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson became friends, and I felt like if they played together, had fun and beat somebody, they would end up being friends,” Sutton said 10 years later.
“They didn’t beat anybody. It couldn’t be their fault. It had to be Hal Sutton’s fault. It had to be.”
