So, for the night owls among us, the Showdown tees off at 11pm Irish time tomorrow (Tuesday) night and I intend to be planted on my couch until the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
It’s hardly ideal preparation for a Christmas party on Wednesday night, but hey, it’s work and even if it wasn’t, I’d be sorely tempted to burn the midnight oil regardless. It is Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler taking on Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka after all…..
When the first iteration of The Match was announced in 2018, I met the news with mixed emotions. Sure, watching Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson go head-to-head in a match was an enticing offer, but having them play for $10 million meant nothing to me. It was eventually reduced to $9 million with suspicious minds suggesting that the PGA Tour had put their thumb on the scale to ensure that it wasn’t a match for their FedEx Cup top prize, prior to the jumps to $18 and $25 million that followed in subsequent years, but still, who cared about the money? Tiger did, I’m sure, and we know Phil definitely did, but playing for $50k out of their own pockets would’ve been just as exciting and maybe even more so.
Still, it was an enjoyable watch nonetheless, and when Match #2 rolled around during the pandemic when virtually all live sport had been non-existent, it was manna from heaven, and who can forget Tom Brady, with a split down the arse of his rain trousers, hacking it round like a 24-handicapper before holing out an outrageous eagle.
Each subsequent match, however, has flattered to deceive. Sure, there have been some highlights, but the Brooks versus Bryson match aside, there’s been no real needle, thus no real additional angles for the public to get invested in.
This time, it’s different. This time, there’s the PGA Tour versus LIV angle with McIlroy and Scheffler taking on Koepka and DeChambeau, and you’d be a fool to think that there wasn’t a little bit of added incentive to win on both sides as a result. Ok, the $10 million in Crypto currency that’s reportedly on offer for the winners is a nice little side detail, but the rest of us don’t care about that, but when you add in that it’s McIlroy and DeChambeau’s first real meeting since the US Open at Pinehurst, and the first real meeting of any kind of LIV and PGA Tour players since the Open Championship at Troon – the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship aside – and that, in Shadow Creek, its being played at one of the toughest courses in the United States, then there are plenty of other reasons for optimism.
But all of those things aside, for me personally, the thing that tips this over the edge is the format. I get why ‘skins’ is a favoured format for these made-for-television matches, since there’s something to play for right until the concluding putt, but, in my opinion, it’s a terrible choice. Whoever gets the most money wins in skins, but it often is in no way reflective of who played the best golf.
This time, we’ve got proper matchplay, and like a proper compilation album, all the hits are included. Six holes of fourball, six holes of foursomes, and six holes of singles, presumably with four total points up for grabs meaning that a 2-2 final score and the potential for a winner-takes-all playoff is a distinct possibility.
Whilst a McIlroy v DeChambeau singles pairing would be my own personal choice, if it’s the other way round and it’s Masters champ against the US Open champ and the four-time major winner against five-star Koepka, then that’s pretty fine as well.
It’s the foursomes that I’m most eagerly anticipating, however, as all four players will be mic’d up and the strategy enlisted on the holes will be pure gold for the nerds among us. Forget about the ‘needling’ that was promised and championed prior to previous editions – we all know Country Clubs aren’t good breeding grounds for elite-level trash talk – this is where on-course discourse will really stand out.
Do I think this will necessarily have any major impact on the negotiation process as the PGA and DP World Tours try to hammer out a deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund? Not really, but I’d expect that the showdown will easily draw in more viewers than most of the Sunday broadcasts of both LIV and PGA Tour events in 2024, and that should serve as something of a wake-up call at least to the powers that be.
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