ORLANDO, Fla. — Tiger Woods raised the phrase “moving the needle” to a different level on Wednesday when the PGA Tour revealed the winners of the Player Impact Program (PIP) the Tour introduced for the first time in 2021.

Despite not having played an official tournament since the 2020 Masters, Woods was declared the winner of the PIP and will be awarded $8 million for it. Phil Mickelson, who recently took to Twitter to declare himself as the PIP winner, actually finished second and takes home $6 million.

In December, Mickelson announced that he’d won the PIP, tweeting, “I’d like to thank all the crazies (and real supporters too) for … helping me win the PIP!!”

After the results were revealed Wednesday, Woods took to Twitter, re-tweeting Mickelson saying, “Whoops.’’

The inaugural program, which awarded $40 million to the top 10 finishers, was measured from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2021, and the final score was calculated based on year-end data.

The metrics to determine the winner used five criteria — Nielsen ratings, Google searches, MVP Index, Meltwater Mentions and Q-Rating, based on a player’s appeal and popularity on social media.

The top 10 players received bonuses from the $40 million pool, which raises to $50 million in 2022. After Woods and Mickelson came Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas, each of whom were awarded $3.5 million, and then Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, world No. 1 Jon Rahm and Bubba Watson, who each cashed $3 million.

“You look at the 10 guys that are on there, and they’re the 10 guys that have been at the top of the game or have been around the top of the game for a long time,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “It’s certainly not something that I’m checking up on every week to see where I’m at, but I think it went the way most of us expected it to go.”

Patrick Cantlay, who’s ranked No. 3 in the world and is not in the Arnold Palmer Invitational field this week, recently denounced the PIP program, saying it should put more weight into players’ results.

“I think I’m old-school in the respect that I would like the money to be doled out relative to play and I don’t think the PIP does that,” Cantlay said at the Genesis Invitational two weeks ago. “It may be the first departure that the tour has had from rewarding good play to rewarding social media or popularity presence, so I don’t like that departure.”

Viktor Hovland, who doesn’t have a Twitter account, said Wednesday, “Obviously, it would be nice to make the PIP, but at the same time I’m not going to go out of my way to try to make that a goal. I spend too much time on my phone already just answering messages. I see it more as a distraction than what it’s doing to help me. My main focus is just to play better golf, and that takes care of most things.”