Pat Perez hits back at Tiger Woods’ LIV Golf comments

LIV golfer Pat Perez has hit back at Tiger Woods on the ‘Son of a Butch’ podcast, hosted by Claude Harmon III, after Woods made critical comments regarding LIV Golf.

Woods’ comments came in late July during The Open Championship and brought into question the finances at stake in the Saudi league. Woods questioned the incentive for players to join LIV, which, unlike the established PGA Tour, offers its players guaranteed money regardless of finish.

« But what are these players doing for guaranteed money, what’s the incentive to practice? » Woods said. “What is the motivation to go out there and win in the mud? You just get paid a lot of money up front and play a few events and play 54 holes. They play loud music and have all these vibes that are different.

Perez challenged Woods’ logic.

« That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard of in my life, » Perez said. “That’s one of the dumbest things he’s ever said. The incentive is the fact that last place is 120,000, first place is four million. You can’t make four million on the PGA Tour. Well, next year you could; they finally got the benefits. But last I checked, he signed a $40 million contract right out of college, he was flying the Nike jet. He found motivation. He could have shut it down right away.

Perez played more than 20 seasons on the PGA Tour before joining LIV in June. It’s safe to say that he strongly disagreed with Woods. Claude Harmon III, Perez’s swing coach, added that Woods was always able to find an « incentive » to compete, no matter how much money he earned up front.

“He had a lot of guarantees. You know what, and he was the hottest. He made so much money on the course that he found motivation to go there,” Perez said. « But again, he’s only played how many tournaments. He hasn’t been there – I’ve never seen him at John Deere, I’ve never seen him support all of those events. He’s played in the majors he played WGC and that’s it he played Torrey never played Riv [Riviera]. But it’s worth every penny. In fact, as I said, it’s two billion short of where it should be, I think.