Pat Perez has blasted Tiger Woods for his criticism of the LIV Golf Series, labelling the 15-time major champion's comments 'stupid s***'. Woods has made no secret of his anti-LIV agenda since the Saudi-backed circuit kicked off earlier this year.
Speaking at The Open Championship at St Andrews in July, the 82-time PGA Tour winner questioned the motive of players who were signing on the dotted line with Greg Norman and co, claiming there is a lack of 'incentive', whilst hitting out at the reduced 54-hole format.
Woods said: "I don't understand it. What these players are doing for guaranteed money, what is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt?
"You are just getting paid a lot of money up front and playing a few events and playing 54 holes. They are playing blaring music. I can understand 54 holes for the Senior Tour. The guys are older and a little more banged up.
"When you are young, 72-hole tests are part of it. We used to have 36-hole play-offs for majors. I just don't see how this is positive in the long term. It would be sad to see some of these young kids never get a chance to walk these hallowed grounds and play in these majors."
Perez however was less than impressed with the golfing great's comments, claiming the incentive in fact lies in the vast amounts of prize money being on offer on the Saudi-backed circuit. The 46-year-old himself has proven just how beneficial LIV can be to players' pockets having earned £6.8 million in just eight events, despite never breaking the top 15 of the 48-man tournaments.
The majority of Perez's riches have come thanks to the efforts of his 4 Aces teammates Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Talor Gooch, after the all-American side won four regular season events before being crowned LIV's inaugural team champions in Miami last month. Hitting back at Woods, Perez told the Son of a Butch podcast : " That's the stupidest s*** I have ever heard of in my life.
"That's one of the stupidest things I think he has said. The incentive is the fact that last place is 120,000, first place is four million. You cannot win four million on the PGA Tour. Now, next year you might; they finally got the perks. But last time I checked, he signed a $40million deal right out of college, was flying on the Nike jet. He found incentive. He could have shut it down right then.
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"He had a lot of guarantees. You know what, and he was the hottest thing. He's made so much money off the course, he found incentive to go." Seemingly taking aim at Woods' lack of commitment to the so-called lesser events on the PGA Tour throughout his career, the LIV rebel added: "But again, he only played how many tournaments.
"He didn't go — I never saw him at John Deere, never saw him supporting all these events. He played in the majors, he played in the WGCs and that was it. He played Torrey. Never played Riv [Riviera]. But he's worth every dime. In fact, like I said, he's two billion short of where he should be, I think."
