Tiger Woods wants another shot at Phil Mickelson.
Woods caught a Thanksgiving cold from his kids and wasn’t 100 percent for their $9 million, winner-take-all match, an insider says.
After winning on the fourth sudden-death playoff hole, Mickelson rubbed it in, telling Woods: “I will not ever let you live this one down. I will bring it up every time I see you.”
“Tiger doesn’t take anything away from Phil, but he was under the weather,” said one source. “He grinded it out, and nearly won. And he wants a second chance.”
The pay-per-view event was a big success, despite the fact that the show inadvertently ended up for free online, forcing Turner Sports (and the other platforms that aired it) to refund the viewers who had paid $19.95.
“It was a hit in terms of how many people bought it, and how they watched it from beginning to end,” said my source.
More than 1 million viewers paid for the event, while another 750,000 — many of whom didn’t pay — streamed it on Bleacher Report Live, a Turner source told me.
“The execs were very pleased, and the sponsors [including Capital One, AT&T, Audi and Wheels Up] were happy — because of the screw-up they reached more people.”
Now Turner knows their experiment worked, and producers are already discussing tweaks to the format to make the next one even better.
They might add two more golfers, making it a match between two-man teams.
Some are calling it a comeback for scandal-plagued Woods, who just struck a deal with Discovery for GolfTV, a coming video-streaming service. Woods’ agent didn’t get back to me.
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