​Photo by Hunter Martin/WireImage Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods enjoyed a thrilling rivalry throughout the late 1990s and into the 2000s. Woods ultimately amassed the better record, with 82 PGA Tour wins and 15 major championships. Yet Mickelson’s 45 PGA Tour victories and six majors are nothing to overlook. It’s fair to say that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are two of the most legendary players to have graced the PGA Tour in the game’s history. Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images It’s sad to see what has happened to both players in recent years. Neither Tiger Woods nor Phil Mickelson will be competing at The Open in two weeks—the third consecutive major in which both have been absent from the field. Their days at the top of the game may be behind them, but at the turn of the century they were among the world’s biggest sports stars. There’s a fascinating excerpt in Alan Shipnuck’s book, Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorised!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colourful Superstar, that highlights a specific issue Woods had with Mickelson during their rivalry. “In February 2003, Mickelson finally clapped back, telling one of the golf magazines, ‘In my mind, Tiger and I don’t have issues between us. Well, maybe one. He hates that I can fly it past him now [off the tee]. He has a faster swing speed than I do, but he has inferior equipment.’” Strictly speaking, Mickelson wasn’t wrong: Woods had chosen not to max out the latest technology, using a ball that spun more (and didn’t carry as far) and a 43.5-inch steel-shafted driver when many peers favored longer, lighter graphite shafts. This setup traded distance for control and allowed Woods to shape the ball more effectively, a trade he believed was worthwhile. Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images “What Phil said was funny because it was true,” says Nick Faldo. “That Nike driver Tiger was using was horrendous.” But that’s nuance. Mickelson faced backlash in the press and in the locker room for what some saw as arrogance, especially since Woods led him 8–0 in career major wins at the time. Tiger reportedly relished the backlash. “That was just Phil being Phil,” he said, not as a compliment but as a jab that didn’t land well. Phil Mickelson’s comments about Tiger Woods were largely accurate, and in many ways they reflected a compliment to Woods. In his prime, the 15-time major champion possessed ball speed and clubhead speed that outran almost everyone on the PGA Tour, perhaps with the exception of John Daly. Mickelson even admitted that his greater distance was partly due to advantages in technology and equipment—an admission that underscores how the two legends both pushed each other to reach new heights in the sport.