How Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson compare in every round they have played together

With the announcement of “The Match” — a winner-take all, $9 million event between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson — we were curious to learn how often the two have been paired together and who holds the all-time scoring edge.

Spoiler: They've played together less than you might think and the overall score is really close.

First, a tip of the hat to the PGA Tour for compiling the data from every Phil and Tiger round. Here are some highlights from what we found:

• Their first pairing came at the 1997 PGA Championship. Both shot a 75 on Sunday, tying for 29th place. You can read more about that here.
• Since then, they’ve played 36 rounds of competitive golf together, not including practice rounds.
• In those rounds, they have combined for 5,178 strokes. After all of them, Tiger leads Phil by 20 shots.
• Their most-recent pairing came at THE PLAYERS in May, where Phil finished Friday 10-over, missing the cut, while Tiger was 1-under heading into the weekend and finished T11.
• In total, Tiger has shot better in 18 rounds, Phil has prevailed in 15, and the two have tied in four.

One thing’s pretty evident from the data, if The Match comes down to the wire, the numbers favor Phil. Of the nine rounds the pair has played that have been decided by one stroke, Phil has won seven.

MORE: Surprisingly, Tiger and Phil have played together only twice at the Masters

The biggest differential came in the 2012 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where Phil shot a 64 to Tiger's 75 — an 11-stroke difference. Tiger’s best performances against Phil came at the 2018 PLAYERS, the 2012 U.S. Open, and the 2008 U.S. Open, where he shot seven strokes better than Lefty in each.

Here’s a look at every round they’ve played together: