National Post (National Edition)
Putting the fun into Tiger-Phil match
BY ADDING BRADY AND MANNING, TV CLEARLY DRIVING FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
Call it the quarantine Super Bowl. Sunday’s made-for-TV match featuring Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning versus Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady is actually a meaningless exhibition, even if it’s a well-intentioned one. But for a sports-starved continent The Match: Champions for Charity at Medalist Golf Club in Florida is must-watch entertainment.
Like the Super Bowl, the actual game and result of the match — which airs Sunday at 3 p.m. ET — is a secondary concern as sports fans and non-sports fans are expected to tune in to see everything that is going on off the course. And face it, we’ve all seen everything on Netflix by now and as thrilling classic sports games are, it will be nice to see something that we don’t already know the result.
Speaking of not knowing the result, that takes us to Manning and Brady, who every now and then will have no idea where their golf ball is going and likely will deliver much of the comedy and banter. Golf fans will remember the original 2018 TV match between Tiger and Phil. Despite playing for an obscene US$9 million, which Mickelson eventually won in a playoff, the event fell flat as the two golf legends barely said a word to one another and played uninspired golf to boot. The lesson learned was that you can’t put two of the most competitive athletes on earth against each other for a Brinks truck worth of money and expect them to yuk it up like it’s a celebrity roast.
That’s where the quarterbacks come in.
Nobody is expecting Manning or Brady to turn Sunday’s match into Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes but the hope is that the two longtime rivals — one retired, one not — will lighten the atmosphere, loosen up Tiger and Phil, and draw in sports fans that might not otherwise want to watch golf even during this Great Sports Depression of 2020.
The event is an 18-hole match with different formats on the front and back nine. The front nine will be a simple four-ball, also known as best ball, where each player plays their own ball and the lowest score for each team counts on every hole. Both Manning and Brady are single-digit handicaps and will get a measly three strokes from the pros on the front nine.
The back nine will be a modified alternate shot where every player tees off and then the team chooses the best drive before alternating shots for the rest of the hole.
“I’ve played some with Tom and he’s a good putter,” Mickelson said on this week’s episode of the Callaway Golf podcast. “He is an eight handicap but he putts like a two handicap. He drives it with the accuracy of an 18 handicap but the distance of a scratch, so you have to take all these components and kind of factor that in.”
Manning’s handicap is slightly lower than Brady’s, making them both good players, but a lot can change when you’re on television teeing off beside Woods and Mickelson.
The players won’t have caddies and each will be driving their own cart, which has become the norm in these days of social distancing.
The scaled-down broadcast will be aired on the Turner networks in the U.S. so basketball great, turned golf enthusiast, turned funnyman Charles Barkley will be providing “analysis” along with former Masters champ Trevor Immelman. World No. 4 Justin Thomas will be adding to the broadcast as an oncourse announcer.
Barkley will play one hole where he will take part in a $200,000 bet in which he will have to make a bogey or better to win.
All of these add-ons make it clear that this second version of the Tiger vs. Phil has learned some lessons and is being set up as pure entertainment rather than the 2018 failure that couldn’t decide if it was a serious competition or fun.
During all the carefully planned frivolity on Sunday, the most interesting aspect of the event for many golf fans will be getting a look at Woods’ golf game and physical health after three months off.
Before the sports world shut down, the 15-time major winner had missed the WGC Mexico Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship to rest his famously ailing back.
The PGA Tour is set to restart June 11-14 with the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial in Texas.
While hockey, basketball, and baseball fans are getting anxious reading minute-by-minute updates about league meetings and debating the merits of Disney World or Las Vegas, this weekend relax and watch real-life live sports.
Golf is back. Even if you can’t get a tee time.