Phil Mickelson judges Tiger Woods return in the most Phil way possible

Bleacher Report, early Friday afternoon during Tiger Woods’ pro-am round at the PNC Championship, tweeted out a split-screen video from the Champions Tour that showed Woods teeing off at the top, and his son, Charlie, at the bottom in the parent-child event. The sports website added the words: “Watching Tiger and Charlie Woods is poetry in motion,” and as of early Saturday afternoon, the tweet had some 700 retweets.

Including one that described the action in a way only the somewhat-frequent Twitter user could. 

“I like Charlie’s recoil better,” Phil Mickelson tweeted. 

Of course, Lefty would weigh in on Woods’ first competitive round since his car crash in late February. Of course, it would contain a touch of snark. Of course, you could imagine that when Mickelson set his iPhone down, he winked and gave a thumb’s up. 

To Mickelson’s defense, the recoil of 12-year-old Charlie was better. Tiger held the follow-through on his drive before bending down to pick up his tee. Charlie whipped his driver down, eyed his ball and grabbed his peg. 

Mickelson opining on Woods also shouldn’t come as much of a shock. Longtime rivals, each has won over 40 times on the PGA Tour (Woods has 82 wins, and Mickelson 45) and each has multiple major championship wins (Woods has 15, and Mickelson six), and a number of those victories have come with the other close behind. Late last month, when Woods shared his first video of him swinging a club since the accident, Mickelson also shared his thoughts in a similar vein to Friday’s assessment. 

“As I’m hanging in Montana, it’s great to see Tiger swinging a golf club again,” he tweeted. “I know he can’t stand me holding a single record so I’m guessing HE wants to be the oldest to ever win a major. I’ll just say this. BRING IT!”

Mickelson, of course, was referring to his victory at the PGA Championship in May, where at the age of 50, he became, as he said, the oldest ever to win a major championship. His sister, Tina, quickly jumped in. 

“Bro, he’s got a number of years before he can even think about that “oldest” record. Calm down,” she tweeted. 

“Whatever,” Phil responded.

Nick Piastowski

Golf.com Editor

Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

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