Why the R&A had to choose between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson

Tiger Woods was invited to a special dinner during the 2022 Open... Phil Mickelson was not

In an exclusive extract from his new book, LIV and Let Die, Alan Shipnuck reveals the drama that went on behind the scenes at the 2022 Open in St Andrews.

A consensus began to build among the Tour’s leading men: They needed more money, of course, but the product would have to be refreshed.

A bedrock principle in the Premier Golf League proposal, which LIV had put into practice, was that every player would compete in every tournament, ensuring more head-to-heads among the top talent. The bloated PGA Tour schedule made that impossible, but what if certain tournaments were structured with wildly elevated purses to be shared among a smaller pool of players? In exchange, all the top stars would be compelled to turn up at each one, ensuring box office. The Tour already had unofficial tiers of tournaments, with a handful of invitational fields smaller than others; those changes would simply codify it.

“Obviously it was big-idea stuff and pie in the sky, and not all the details were fleshed out,” says McIlroy, “but at least it created a framework that we could work from.”

There was an obvious downside to cleaving the Tour into the haves and have-mores: the non-elevated tournaments would wither and perhaps have difficulty attracting corporate sponsorship. But that was a concern for another day.

To fend off LIV Golf, the PGA Tour would need to placate its most important players. The non-stars could only muck things up, which was why mid-level players at the JP McManus Pro-Am, such as Tom Hoge, weren’t invited to the secretive confabs. “It’s fine, whatever,” says Hoge. “Those guys earned the right to be there. You’re only as smart as your place on the money list, or at least that’s the perception.”

It has always been a fundamental question on the PGA Tour: Does the commissioner work for the players, or do they work for him? The activism of the golfers in the summer of 2022 answered that—for the time being.

Newly empowered, Woods called a second meeting at the pro-am but pointedly excluded Monahan. It’s not a coincidence that Woods, a lone wolf and introvert, found his voice while in the company of McManus. “JP never gives an opinion without being asked,” says McGinley, “but he’s always in the backwaters, watching, learning, asking questions. When you’re ready, he’s the guy to go to for answers. His life is about assessing odds and managing risk. Tiger goes to JP for advice. Of course he does. They are closer than people know. I don’t think many people have Tiger’s trust, but certainly JP does.”

In that second gathering, the players hatched the idea of bringing in “outside counsel,” says McIlroy, though “not in a legal sense, but someone to bounce ideas off that’s not within the Tour to sort of maybe bring a little bit more clarity. I think when you’re in something, it’s maybe hard to take a step back and see the bigger picture in a way. So to have someone come in and do that; that was definitely the initiation of those discussions.”

McIlroy had someone in mind: Colin Neville. He’s the boardroom Zelig from Raine Capital who led the Premier Golf League’s unsuccessful negotiations with the European Tour. Throughout the process, Neville had impressed various folks with his love of golf and mastery of granular details. Because Raine had not lost any money when the PGL deal collapsed, Neville had no axes to grind, and he was happy to jump back into the arena, albeit for a different team.

Amid all the palace intrigue at Adare Manor, the LIV guys were living it up. Deep into the night following the closing party—at which Woods stood and offered heartfelt words about McManus— Koepka, Jason Kokrak, Pat and Ashley Perez, and Dustin Johnson and his bride, Paulina, repaired to a small, private bar tucked into the Manor. The drinks were flowing, and Paulina, spilling out of a tight black dress, was having trouble balancing atop a leather barstool. Perez, wearing a backward baseball cap, pointed at Johnson, who had recruited him to LIV, and shouted, “I owe everything to that man!” DJ was too busy tending to his wobbly wife to notice.

Despite the relaxed setting, Koepka radiated some heat when reflecting on his career change. “F*ck all of those country club kids who talk sh*t about me,” he said, referring to the likes of Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, and others. “You think I give a f*ck what they think? You think I care what people say about me? I just had three surgeries, and I’m supposed to turn down $130 million? I grew up with nothing. After signing that contract, the first person I called was my mom. We both cried.”

From Adare Manor, many of the players travelled to the Scottish Open in North Berwick. Woods and McIlroy skipped it, resting up for their date with destiny at St. Andrews.

When covid cancelled the 2020 Open Championship, the stewards at the Royal & Ancient juggled the rota to ensure that the Old Course would host the 150th Open in 2022. It was supposed to be a joyous celebration of the game’s oldest championship and most historic venue, but everyone was edgy during Open week.

It marked Paul Casey’s first real tournament since the onetime UNICEF ambassador had gone to LIV. The co-hosts of the influential No Laying Up podcast had been staunchly anti-LIV from the beginning but they were particularly riled-up about Casey’s turnabout: D.J. Piehowski called him a “historic, historic, historic pussy,” while Tron Carter referred to Casey as a “c*nt.”

With this as the backdrop, Sky Sports reporter Jamie Weir approached Casey on the practice chipping green at the Old Course to see if he would do an on-camera interview. “He said, ‘Oh, hello, mate,’ in his usual smug, insincere tone,” says Weir. “I asked about having a chat, and right away he was defensive and wanted to know the questions. I told him I wanted to talk about the 150th Open, his good history at St. Andrews, how his back was feeling, and then finish off with a question about LIV.” Casey asked what the LIV question would be. Says Weir, “I said that he was twenty-ninth in the world but had just joined a tour without ranking points and would surely fall out of the top fifty, so, given that, had he given serious consideration that this Open could be the last major championship of his career? His face darkened. He said, ‘F*ck off. Go f*ck yourself. What a f*cking sh*t question. Go f*ck yourself. That’s a sh*tty f*cking question from a sh*tty f*cking reporter.’ I said, ‘Paul, you’re massively overreacting to this.’ He was like, ‘No, I’m not. Go f*ck yourself. F*ck you, and f*ck your interview.’”

Says Casey with a laugh, “That’s a fairly accurate recounting. But what is missing is the fact he sauntered over, invaded my space, and interjected himself into an environment where he was not invited. And what he actually said was, ‘This is probably going to be the last major championship you ever play.’ He’s just assuming I’m going to fail! I could have won that Open and been exempt for another twenty-five years. I was there grinding on my game, and it was his smugness that got me. I can debate with anybody, but he was just being a dickhead. You know what, Jamie Weir can go f*ck himself. Again.”

The tension seeped into all of the week’s pomp. The R&A hosted a “Celebration of Champions” in which thirty-eight male and female winners of various British Amateurs and Opens played in a four-hole exhibition. It was a glittering roll call of living history, featuring Woods, McIlroy, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, and Nick Faldo, among others. Louis Oosthuizen also played; he had pledged his allegiance to LIV but is so amiable and innocuous that no one objected to his presence. One two-time Open champion was not invited: Greg Norman. The golf establishment was going out of its way to punish and humiliate him. Mickelson also skipped the exhibition. “[The R&A] said, ‘Look, we don’t think it’s a great idea for you to go, but if you want to, you can,’” he said. “I just didn’t want to make a big deal about it, so I said, ‘Fine.’ We both kind of agreed that it would be best if I didn’t.”

More hurtful was his snub from a private dinner for Open winners held in the R&A clubhouse. Woods orchestrated that. “He talked to a handful of other [past champions] to get their blessing and then went to the R&A and told them, basically, no one wanted Phil there and it would make the night weird and awkward,” says one of the men at the dinner. “Whose side were they going to take, Tiger’s or Phil’s? That’s an easy choice.”

LIV And Let Die by Alan Shipnuck, published by Simon & Schuster, is out now, priced at RRP £25.

Read our explosive and exclusive with Alan Shipnuck, where he talks about whether Tiger Woods’ car crash might not have been an accident, the future of tour golf, player greed, beef with Justin Thomas, and much more.