LOS ANGELES. Tiger Woods doesn’t know what to expect at the Masters Champions Dinner, the first time PGA Tour and LIV players get together in an intimate setting.

Woods has only played one official event since LIV Golf launched last June, when he was paired with Max Homa and Matt Fitzpatrick, both of whom are Tour loyalists, in the first two rounds of the Open Championship.

But the Dinner of Champions promises to be different after Augusta National announced it would not ban LIV defectors who were otherwise eligible for the first major of the year.

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Full match time at The Genesis Invitational

“I don’t know because I haven’t been around them,” Woods said Tuesday at the Genesis Invitational, where he’s playing his first non-main round on the tour since October 2020. “I don’t know what that reaction is. be. I know some of our friends have definitely taken a different path, but we’ll see when all that happens. It’s still a couple of months away.”

LIV has signed several former Masters winners – Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reid and Charl Schwarzel – to at least create the possibility of some friction between the two belligerents, especially with the pending antitrust lawsuit.

Central Golf

Bubba on Masters Dinner: “I’ll sit outside”

OT Brentley Romaine

— January 31, 2023, 9:23 am

Scotty Scheffler joked that this year’s Masters Champions Dinner he’ll have a “private table” for Bubba Watson. Even if it’s true, Watson says he won’t have a problem.

“The Dinner of Champions is obviously going to be something that will be talked about,” Woods said. “But we should generally honor Scotty [Scheffler]. Scotty is the winner, this is his dinner. So, you have to make sure that Scotty gets the reward he deserves, as well as being aware of the nature of what happened and the people who left, just where our situations are legal or emotional, that means a lot.”