


Tiger Woods cryptically broke his silence on the merger between PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
The 15-time major winner shared a Twitter message on Sunday night that appeared to dispute having seen unverified leaked documents that alleged he gave a scripted PGA Tour pep talk against LIV Golf.
“In response to the talking points memo released this weekend, I have never seen this document until today, and I did not attend the players meeting for which it was prepared at the 2022 Travelers,” he wrote in the Tweet.
The documents posted by Twitter user @desertdufferLLG over the weekend suggest Woods was selected to give a scripted speech at a players’ meeting held on June 21, 2022, backing the words of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, as reported by Golf Channel.
The “speech” began with Tiger asking Monahan and his staff to leave the room, then diving into a series of flowery praises toward Monahan – calling him “our captain” and a “fighter.”
Of the rally cries allegedly planned for Woods to share, the most risible might be: “First, do what I did: tell the Saudis to go f–k themselves. And mean it.”
Woods reportedly turned down a deal somewhere between $700 and 800 million from LIV Golf to stay loyal to the PGA Tour, for whom he was a staunch vocal supporter.
Monahan, according to the leaked documents, wanted him to urge other players to do the same in the scripted speech.
The general ideas would not have been completely out of character for Woods, who has actively spoken out against LIV Golf in support of the Tour.
He questioned the players’ incentive to “go out and earn it” in his press conference before the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews last July, as the top-tier LIV players were recruited with astronomical offers to defect.
A lot has changed since then.
After the civil war between the rival leagues raged on for another year, it was announced in June that the PGA Tour was merging with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the entity that bankrolled LIV.
It’s unknown if Woods might be done defending Monahan, who has been called a hypocrite, among other things, by golf fans for making a behind-the-scenes deal with LIV without consulting his own players.
Monahan has been away from the sport due to a health issue first reported at the US Open.
Woods has not played since withdrawing from the Masters and recently underwent surgery to repair the talus bone in his ankle.