It was the best of the times. It was the worst of the times. It was the epoch of Tiger Woods. It was also the Phil Mickelson era. It was the end of summer and the beginning of fall. It was September of 2007 at the TPC Boston, Norton, Massachusetts. 

Sunday at the Deutsche Championship – the second FedEx Cup Playoff event – brought an unusual thrill for fans. Woods and Mickelson were paired together. Both are at the top of their game. Woods had already won five titles by that time. Mickelson won twice but has four top-three finishes already. 

Very few cared that it wasn’t the final pairing. Very few remembered that Brett Wetterich was the 54-hole leader. Arron Oberholser was second behind. Lefty was third at 11-under, and Woods was one shot behind in 4th. The gallery knew it was going to be Woods vs. Mickelson. For the sixth time, the duo was paired together in the final round. 

The battle was too well-known to recount in full. Phil Mickelson advanced to the back nine with a four-stroke advantage over Woods. He doubled the 12th, by which point the battle was effectively between the two, as both Oberholser and Wetterich started throwing away their advantage. 

Mickelson matched Woods birdie for birdie on the 16th and 18th to win by two. But it was the 17th that Mickelson’s former caddie, Jim Bones Mackay, remembers vividly. Lefty was two shots ahead of Woods, with both having a realistic chance of winning. Mackay went away to get some water. 

Woods walked in. 

Mackay didn’t think Woods would strike up a conversation. Players remain laser-focused in moments like this. Conversations are kept to a bare minimum. But Woods wanted to say something. “Hey man, no matter how this plays out next hour, I just want you to know it was a lot of fun today.”

An hour later, it didn’t play out in Woods’s favor. Mickelson birdied the 18th and won by two strokes. The first time he posted a lower score than the 15-time major winner, having paired with him for the sixth time. 

The Woods-Mickelson relationship has soured in recent times. And Mackay is more on the bag for Lefty, either. But he still remembers the words from Tiger Woods. What does that tell us about the 82-time PGA Tour winner? Mackay believes it’s something that no one really values enough about the man. 

Tiger Woods always loves competition. Always.

There was a time when Charlie Rose asked Woods which type of victory he liked better. The ones where he obliterated the field? Like the 1997 Masters victory by 12 strokes, or the 2000 US Open win by 15 strokes. Or, the ones he won by a thin margin. Woods picked the latter. It’s always worth more to win by a stroke or two, where the duel hangs on till the last hole. 

It was in the 2007 Deutsche Open. 

“It speaks volumes in my opinion of how classy Tiger was, what it ultimately meant to him to have people step up and take him on. It wasn’t gonna work out all the time for him, but he just appreciated the rivalries and intense battles that happened on some Sundays,” Mackay added while chatting with the hosts of the Glue Guys Podcast. 

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have been paired together 37 times in their career. According to the PGA Tour, they posted the same score on four occasions. Woods carded a better score 18 times, and Mickelson picked up a better score 13 times. Only nine times has either one of them been the champion and the other runner-up. There, Mickelson leads Woods 5-4.