Tiger & Phil

Golf's Most Fascinating Rivalry

By: Bob Harig

Narrated by: Adam Barr

Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

This audiobook includes a bonus conversation between Bob Harig and Jason Sobel.

Bob Harig's Tiger & Phil provides an in-depth chronicle of the decades-long rivalry that drove the success of golf's two biggest stars, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

For more than two decades, there have been two golfers who have captivated, bemused, inspired, frustrated, fascinated, and entertained us, and in doing so have demanded our attention–Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Even with all the ink that has been spilled on Tiger, no one has ever written about his relationship with Phil and how their careers have been inextricably intertwined. Furthermore, very little has been written about Phil Mickelson, who is more than just an adversary. He is a fascinating Hall of Fame golfer in his own right.

These two biggest names (and draws) in golf have, for better and for worse, been the ultimate rivals. But it is so much more complicated than that. Each player has pushed the other to be better. They have teased each other and fought. They have battled to the bitter end on the course making for some of the greatest moments in the game for the last 20 years. They have each gone through injury and health problems, legal problems, falling in and out of favor with the press. And over the course of their time together in the game they have gradually become not just rivals but friends.

In the tradition of major bestsellers such as Arnie & Jack, When the Game Was Ours, The Rivals, and Brady vs. Manning, Tiger & Phil will change the way we look at these players and the game itself.

©2022 Bob Harig (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“The only thing I enjoyed more than broadcasting the Tiger-Phil rivalry for over twenty years was reading all the juicy tidbits from behind the scenes by the amazing Bob Harig. Every golf enthusiast will want to dive into this.” (Jim Nantz, CBS-TV)

"Bob Harig was born to write this brilliant and definitive historical document on the Tiger-Phil rivalry. After walking step for step with these two titans for decades, Harig delivers fascinating, previously-untold stories about the battles that defined them. This is the ultimate insider's look at the real Tiger-Phil relationship, and at the high-stakes pursuit of golf immortality." (Ian O'Connor, three-time New York Times best-selling author of Arnie & Jack)

“In many ways golf has never had a rivalry to match Tiger and Phil’s. Tiger was a perfectionist and an icy star much like Ted Williams, and he always had that hard cold stare of high purpose. Phil was golf’s version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, creating awe from error, and he always had that paw-in-the-cookie-jar smile. They weren’t so much oil and water as they were thesis and antithesis. Bob Harig writes a book we all want to read as much as we all wanted to watch them play.’’ (Brandel Chamblee, Golf Channel analyst, former PGA Tour player, and author of Anatomy of Greatness: Lessons from the Best Golf Swings in History)

A wonderful golf book

I loved every piece of this book. It was full of great information and stories

Very good chronological view

Really enjoyed going through the history on and off the course it Phil and Tiger! Loved the narrator and feeling like I watching the tourneys hits and misses.

Same as other books about Tiger. Don’t expect head to head drama between the two…

Best listened to at 1.05x. Narrator is unnecessarily slow.

There’s nothing in this book that isn’t in another book about Tiger. There really isn’t a lot of intertwining of the two characters. They didn’t have that many head to head meetings so it’s a chapter about Phil, a chapter about Tiger. Repeat. The chapters also seem to be stand alone pieces. Information is repeated in many times through the book, quotes about Tiger exceeding Jack and Arnie’s total Masters wins, Phil’s broken leg or Butch Harmony’s lineage come to mind.

No new stories

Incredibly dull book for even casual golf fans. No new stories included for either Tiger or Phil or their rivalry. Instead, the book is just a compilation of the same old stories with some non-insightful narration trying to align them together in a single book.

Unbalanced but informative

There appears (in this readers opinion) a bias towards Woods over Mickelson in this book. With full disclosure and as a left handed golfer I am a bigger fan of Lefty.

However the author skims over many of Woods indiscretions, introducing some of them without taking a deep dive into the 5 W’s. Whereas there is a wealth of details concerning those of Lefty’s.

This could be speculative at best but it seems as though the author is still concerned about his continued career in covering golf and upsetting the community.

I would recommend this book to the novice or new golf fan who may not have been around or aware of the two players during the last 30 years.

My overall review is an average to above average rating.