Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler trying to ignore LIV Golf drama ahead of Masters reunion: ‘It’s been difficult’

LOS ANGELES — Though it’s still about two months away, the Champions Dinner at Augusta National is already drawing plenty of attention.

It’s easy to see why, too. The Masters — and that dinner specifically — will be one of the first events that puts PGA Tour golfers and LIV Golf members in the same room since the controversial Saudi Arabian golf league’s inception.

Tiger Woods, however, is trying to keep the focus on what he thinks really matters.

“We as a whole need to honor Scottie [Scheffler]. Scottie’s the winner, it’s his dinner,” Woods said Tuesday ahead of the Genesis Invitational, which marks his first competitive tournament in seven months.

“So making sure that Scottie gets honored correctly but also realizing the nature of what has transpired and the people that have left, just where our situations are either legally, emotionally, there’s a lot there.”

Scheffler 'kind of clueless' about Masters dinner

Scheffler won the Masters last April in what was his third career win on Tour. It was part of his breakout year in the sport, which included four wins, 11 top-10 finishes and a rise to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings. He retook that spot on Sunday, too, after successfully defending his title at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

As the defending champion, Scheffler will host the Champions Dinner ahead of the Masters, something he said he’s leaning on his wife, Meredith, quite a bit to help plan. He still doesn’t have a meal picked out, and admittedly doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do or say to anybody, let alone the LIV Golf guys.

"I haven't really gotten too much info. I've got to talk to a few of the guys and figure out what actually goes on that night because I'm still kind of clueless," Scheffler said. "I'm hoping that it will be a fun night. Gathering all those guys together in a room, I mean, it should be a lot of fun. It's an historic group of people, Masters champions, and I'm sure that week we'll all put our personal opinions aside and just have a good night and just kind of enjoy what the night really is."

The LIV-PGA Tour feud has been ongoing for more than a year, and it’s been incredibly contentious. The two leagues are deep in a legal battle, and LIV Golf players are still banned from competing in PGA Tour events. The Masters and the other three major championships, however, are still available to LIV Golf members so long as they qualify.

“We never would have expected the game of golf to be in this situation, but it is,” Woods said. “That’s the reality … Obviously, they're a competitive organization trying to create their best product they possibly can, and we’re trying to create the best product that we think the future of golf, how it should be played. How do we do that? We’re still working on that.”

Rory McIlroy has been one of the loudest opponents of LIV, dating back to before it even started. McIlroy, along with Woods, has been instrumental in the Tour’s changes to combat the new league — which included new elevated events on the Tour’s schedule and the TGL league the two are launching next year.

The process has been anything but easy, Woods said. Yet throughout the whole thing, McIlroy is playing perhaps the best golf in his career. He won both the Tour’s and the DP World Tour’s season-long title races last fall and retook the No. 1 spot in the world before Scheffler took it back in Phoenix.

“It’s been an ebb and flow, it really has. And it’s been difficult, there’s no lie,” Woods said. “You’ve seen our ambassador, Rory, go through it. It’s been tough on him, but he’s been exceptional. To be able to go through all that — I’ve been with him on all those conference calls and side meetings — and for him to out there and play and win, it’s been incredible.”

From Scheffler’s angle, at least for now, things just seem much calmer than they did a year ago.

"Last year it was a lot of drama," Scheffler said. "It was like, 'who's going to go? I'm not going, now this guy's going,' and it's like all this stuff is going on around us and was kind of hard to focus on the tournament.

"Now I feel like we've settled in a bit, but it's still weird that certain guys aren't here."

As for what’s ahead in the coming months between the two leagues — LIV Golf will kick off its second season later this month in Mexico — Woods and others are trying not to think too hard about it just yet. Woods is simply focused on trying to win again on Tour, something he said Tuesday he knows he’s still capable of.

“I don’t know what that reaction’s going to be,” Woods said of the Masters. “I know that some of our friendships have certainly taken a different path, but we’ll see when all that transpires. That is still a couple months away.”