Tiger Woods would use his overwhelming crowd support to knock adversaries like Phil Mickelson off their game
Tiger Woods had a playbook of sorts to keep Phil Mickelson from getting too comfortable on the golf course.
AP Photo/Matt York
- Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have one of the greatest rivalries in all of golf.
- Woods used to use four subtle mind games to knock Mickelson off his game.
- Once Mickelson figured them out, things shifted a bit.
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have been rivals on the golf course for their entire professional careers.
Through more than two decades, the most dominant golfer in the world and the most entertaining golfer in the world have headlined plenty of duels at some of the biggest tournaments in the world.
While both players are masters of gamesmanship, Woods employed a few mind games against Mickelson that gave him an edge in the early years of their rivalry.
According to Alan Shipnuck's new biography of Mickelson, "Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf's Most Colorful Superstar," Woods used several tricks to help rattle his rival, including using the often overwhelming support from the crowd to his advantage.
In the early years of their rivalry, Tiger's needling worked, with Woods dominating their head-to-head matchups. But according to Shipnuck, things shifted a bit in 2007 after Mickelson hired Butch Harmon as a swing coach.
Harmon was a no-nonsense figure that had previously worked with Tiger, and was "more than happy to share with Mickelson some of his rival's secrets," according to Shipnuck.
Per the book, these were the four games Tiger would play with Mickelson, according to Harmon:
1. Woods always tried to putt-out first so the crowd would be moving to the next tee while Mickelson was putting.
2. [Woods] would linger behind the green and let Phil walk up to the tee box first, so when Tiger arrived, his playing partner would have to listen to the roar.
3. On holes when he was between a 3-wood or driver, Woods would choose less club so he could fart around in the fairway and make Mickelson watch him hit what would inevitably be a laser-like approach.
4. If Phil was amped up and moving fast, Tiger would slow his walk and pace of play; if Mickelson had a more leisurely vibe, Woods sped up his gait and routine. Either way, the goal was to try and upset his adversary's rhythm.
"He's been doing it to you his whole career and you don't even know it," Harmon told Mickelson, after revealing Woods' four-step process of gamesmanship.
But armed with the knowledge of what exactly Woods was trying to pull, Mickelson and then-caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay were able to navigate the difficult waters of taking the game to Tiger.
Through the final round of the 2007 Deutsche Bank Championship, "Mickelson and Bones Mackay were stealing knowing glances at each other over Tiger's theatrics, which they finally could recognize," writes Shipnuck.
Mickelson would go on to win the tournament, beating Woods by two strokes.
From there, the mind games between Mickelson and Woods would continue to evolve as their careers continued to intertwine. But with Mickelson now able to identify Woods' antics, he gained an advantage he had previously never held in their rivalry.
Shipnuck's book, "Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf's Most Colorful Superstar," is available now.