Phil Mickelson wins PGA Tour’s year-long Player Impact Program; Tiger Woods second

Phil Mickelson has won the year-long Player Impact Program and Tiger Woods took second place, multiple sources confirmed to GolfChannel.com on Wednesday, although the PGA Tour said in a statement the results will not be official until approximately Feb. 15.

Mickelson tweeted that he won the $8 million PIP bonus that’s based on various social and traditional media measurements and sources confirmed that Woods, who didn’t play an official PGA Tour event in 2021 as he recovered from a February car crash, won $6 million for finishing second.

However, in a statement, the Tour said the final results have not been released and the program runs through Dec. 31. The results will then be reviewed by an independent audit.

The Tour created the program this year to reward the players that bring the most interest to the circuit but kept the PIP list confidential. Players were told where they were ranked on the list but were not granted access to the entire ranking.

“To us, it’s a program that we created, was created by our players, with our players, for our players, and that’s what we decided that we were going to do when we created it,” Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in August at the Tour Championship.

The list is based on five criteria: Google searches, Meltwater Mentions (global media exposure), MPV Index (social media reach), Nielsen score (network broadcast exposure) and Q-Score (familiarity and appeal).

It remains unclear where other top players – like world No. 1 Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, whose on-course performance and off-course engagement is unrivaled at the moment – finished on the final PIP list, which is based on the calendar year and not the Tour schedule.

Mickelson also tweeted that to collect all of the $8 million bonus he had to add an event to his schedule this season that he hadn’t played in a few years. “See you in Kapalua [Sentry Tournament of Champions],” tweeted Mickelson, who hasn’t played the winner’s-only event since 2001.

Many contend the PIP is the Tour’s response to a long-rumored super league that’s attempting to lure the circuit’s top players away with the promise of guaranteed contracts, which the Tour has never allowed.