(Reuters) – Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will play a coronavirus relief golf match next month with Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, CNBC reported on Wednesday.
The report, which sourced an unnamed person familiar with the negotiations, said the charity match would be held at an undisclosed location without fans and is being organised by the PGA Tour and AT&T’s WarnerMedia.
The negotiations are still being finalised but the match pitting 15-times major champion Woods and Manning against five-times major winner Mickelson and Brady could be aired on live TV and is unlikely to be featured on pay-per-view, the report said.
“Discussions along these lines have been ongoing for quite some time, but nothing has been approved by the tour,” the PGA Tour said in a statement.
A matchup featuring two of the most famous golfers of their era and two of the all-time greatest NFL quarterbacks would be a rare sporting event during the coronavirus pandemic which has brought the sporting world to a halt.
The event will feature a small production crew to film it and each individual will obey the social-distancing recommendations to stay six-feet apart, the report said.
Mickelson was asked recently on Twitter about the chances of a round of golf against Woods being live streamed in the near future, and the American replied: “Working on it”.
When another fan tweeted to Mickelson asking him not to “tease”, the 49-year-old responded: “I don’t tease. I’m kinda a sure thing”.
Woods, 44, last competed in mid-February and then withdrew from a number of tournaments with a back injury before the PGA Tour decided to cancel a slew of events because of the coronavirus.
Mickelson finished third in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in early February and missed the cut in his next two starts.
Woods and Mickelson played each other in a winner-takes-all $9 million matchplay exhibition in November, 2018 that was golf’s first venture into pay-per-view.
That event was hyped like a Las Vegas prize fight but proved more of a pillow fight with both golfers in jovial mood, playing for a purse that was put up by sponsors and went to a charity of Mickelson’s choice.
Brady recently joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after 20 years with the New England Patriots during which he won an NFL-record six Super Bowl titles.
Manning, who played for the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, retired in 2016 as the NFL’s all-time leader in passing touchdowns and yards and is the only five-times winner of the league’s Most Valuable Player award.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Additional reporting by Andrew Both, editing by Ed Osmond)
