It is upon us..... No doubt you've been following the hype as, perhaps for those in low-Earth orbit, it's been difficult to avoid.
Most notably this totally unscripted bit:
However, the presser did deliver this piece of gold: Mickelson is so confident that he'll birdie the first hole at Shadow Creek that he's willing to bet $100,000 on the line.
Tiger must be standing on a telephone book.
“So I’ve thought a lot about this and there are spots out on the course that are some great spots for a little challenge and the challenges are coming directly out of our pockets, OK?” Mickelson said. “And I feel like the first hole is a great hole for me. And I believe – in fact I’m willing to risk $100,000 that says I birdie the first hole. So that’s how good I feel heading into this match.”With some "oooohhhs" filling the room, Mickelson added, "You don’t have to take it. You don’t have to take it at all. But I’m going to throw that out there.”
To which Woods replied, "Double it."
Congratulations to all those that took the over on the "There will be a $50,000 or more side bet" prop.
I rolled my eyese when I heard Phil talking of seven-figure side bets, but he seems all-in on playing the roll of former friend Billy Walters.
Josh Berhow has the seven funniest lines from that presser, and you'll no doubt agree that we're grading on the curve:
5. Referring to Mickelson’s Mizzen+Main commercial, the one in which Mickelson hit the dance floor and did the worm, Woods said, “I’m not dancing [if I win]. That’s not happening.” [Laughs] Added Mickelson: “I’m intimidating with my moves.”
This is far and away the best of the bunch:
7. Asked if there were any thought of calling it “The Match: Phil vs. Tiger,” with Mickelson’s name first, they both laughed. “That was my first loss,” Mickelson said. “And I’m trying to get it back even 1-1 on Friday.”
Which only reminds of the fact that the negotiation of the terms and conditions might have been the best part of the entire process. Although, as I've noted previously, Phil would seem to have the advantage as far as format and course set-up, so perhaps he's playing 3-D chess.
See if you think he's really the smartest guy in the room with this behind the curtain view of that first skirmish:
“Did you see how I baited him like that,” Mickelson crowed. “So, $200,000 I makebirdie on the first hole.”
“Just water down the left. He likes to lose his golf ball to the left. A little flare out that he hits,” Woods chided.
“Here’s what you’re missing,” Mickelson replied. “I’m going to hit a 2-iron in the fairway, and I am a great short-iron player. In fact, one of the best.”
“Yeah,” Woods countered, “but if he hits that 2-iron a little hot, which he sometimes does, it’s a little right and hot and it’ll be up against that tree, he’ll be blocked out, so he can’t spin the ball … yeah.”
Magic 8-Ball says: Outlook Cloudy.
Dylan Dethier finds it far worse than cloudy for our hero, taking that which comes out of Phil's piehole far too seriously:
Au contraire, Phil. The $200,000 bet Lefty put on the table is, by any statistical measure, a disaster. Let’s break down why.
The par-4 opener at Shadow Creek is 393 yards, making it relatively short by PGA Tourstandards. But take a look at the hole itself. The landing area narrows significantly about halfway down the hole, meaning Mickelson will either lay back off the tee or try to find a relatively small target with his mercurial driver. A creek runs down the left side of the hole, while a fairway bunker guards the dogleg.
In effect, that combination makes Shadow Creek’s opener a relatively neutral par 4, perhaps slightly easier than average. And there’s more good news for Mickelson: in 2018, he ranked sixth on Tour in birdie average, as well as sixth in par-4 birdie average. The only problem? He birdied par-4s just 20.06 percent of the time. That’s admirable, by the way — Dustin Johnson led the Tour and was hardly any better at 22.52 percent. But that number should be far closer to 50 percent for Mickelson’s bet to make sense.
If you let Phil drop his ball in the fairway, he's still be below a 50% chance to make birdie.... But of course it's that 3-D chess, so we mere mortals should just ooh and aah at the way he sucked Tiger in.
Josh Berhow obviously drew the short straw, also shamelessly pimping the vent with these nine reasons to watch:
3. No slouches
Yes, these two are past their prime, but it’s not like they are limping onto the senior tour. Tiger Woods won the Tour Championship a couple of months ago and even Phil Mickelson ended a winless drought earlier this year, winning the WGC-Mexico Championship. Mickelson struggled to end the season, but if you think he won’t have his “A” game for this matchup you are crazy.
Josh musta been in a medically-induced coma during the Ryder Cup....
As for this?
8. The broadcast team
Charles Barkley and Samuel L. Jackson are on the pregame show. I’ll pay $20 just to see what they have to say about the wonders of the golf swing.
To each his own, but those guys have to keep it lively for an hour, and I'm taking the under.
The best reason to watch might be the golf course, for which your humble blogger will never meet the membership criteria. This unbylined item plays up that angle:
What it Looks Like: Hewn from a poker table-flat, lifeless plot of desert, Fazio and Wynn conjured up a Hollywood set come to life, complete with rolling terrain, thousandsof pines, bursts of flowers and a network of creeks and lakes. The foliage and features block out any glimpse of the surrounding desert, except for the mountain peaks.Signature holes: There’s not a weak link in the entire chain, but five holes stand out for scenery and challenge, including the 553-yard par-5 4th, the 409-yard par-4 9th and the 438-yard par-4 15th. Still, the showstoppers, as they should be in Las Vegas, arrive at the end, with the 164-yard, par-3 17th and the 564-yard, par-5 18th. In particular, the 18th befits its locale as the ultimate gambler’s hole. From an elevated tee, the ambitious player will contend with a water carry on both shots via a network of three lakes separated by waterfalls. Choose the three-shot route and you still must fly over water to a long, narrow green surrounded by grassy hills, pine trees, mountains and flowers. Desert? What desert?
Sounds pretty dreadful, I know... Even I'll concede that this is a perfect site for Fazio, because even if it offered unique and interesting landforms, he'd plow them under.
Mike Bamberger is an old-school purist, making it somehwat cruel to enlist him in the hype effort. To no surprise, he can't deliver the goods on this header::
This golf match is tricky for a lot of reasons, and a small part of it is because the two combatants are at the very least pretending to be chummy. Plus, the stakes are actually low. Also, their professional lives have unfolded, for the most part, on broadcast TV. Now we’re being asked to pay upfront. The actor Michael Douglas was on with Stephen Colbert Tuesday night (CBS), talking about how hard it was for him to make the transition from being a TV star to a movie star. “Television,” he explained, “they see you for free. Movies they pay to see you.” We’ve been paying to watch Phil and Tiger for years, but it has been so indirect we didn’t even know it. For this event, we have to get out our credit cards.
Mark Steinberg, Tiger’s agent, is doing his part, to promote Capital One’s The Match (its full name) and lay the groundwork for future ones. There were more direct quotes from him in a recent (and excellent) Golfworld piece about the mechanics of The Match than you might have ever read before. Steinberg helped orchestrate the seven years in which Woods was involved in a series called Monday Night Golf.
“We created those ‘Battle’ programs years ago, and Tiger was in the prime of his career, but we’re coming at this event differently,” Mark Steinberg told Golfworld. “This is going to be fun. This is a TV show. That will make it more sustainable. You’ll see things that you just won’t see on a Sunday at a regular tour event. Are they going to want to beat each other’s brains in? Absolutely. They’re there to compete. But they’re going to have a hell of a lot of fun, and it will be different start to finish. The battles back in the day were more about competition. This has other elements that make it entertainment, too.”
It is tricky, because they have to keep this interesting for four hours or more.... It's obvious that the difference between this and the prior iteration referenced above is the gambling component, and Phil is obviously all in on that.... But he's got a certain predisposition to over-sell, and the underlying match has to deliver the goods as well.
It seems to me that in a perfect world the side bets will carry the water for a while, perhaps the front nine. But then the smack talk should recede and the guys have to be grinding down the stretch to prevail in the match, and that's a crapshoot. It's easy to see Phil goading Tiger into side bets, while four down in the match....
You know how amused I was about the LPGA's Box 'o Cash? You'll not be surprised that this photo has generated some pushback:
Putrid and pathetic.... Got it.
So, who ya got? Our friends at Golf.com convened their panel of writers on this subject. In fact, given the names with which I am unfamiliar, they might have included the office janitor as well....
First, those who like the fave:
Rachel Bleier,: Tiger — he didn’t come back to get his 80th win to lose to Phil in a head-to-head match. He’s here to win.
Alan Bastable: Tiger. When asked Tuesday about his being the 2:1 betting favorite, Tiger said those odds were about right. I know there was a lot of forced peacocking going on in the presser, but that moment felt genuine. It’s just like the old times: Tiger knows he’s better than his opponent, his opponent knows that, and Tiger knows his opponent knows that. I think I butchered that saying, but you know what I mean. Woods, 3 and 1.
Josh Sens: Tiger. As much as I’d like to go against the conventional Vegas wisdom, which has Tiger as a 2-to-1 favorite, I just can’t find enough argument to go with Phil. Yeah. He’s the better smack talker. But Tiger is the better player in better recent form.
Fair enough, but remember that that "recent form" is a double-negative.... Not only did it not include much form (No e-mails please, I know Tiger won at East Lake), but it wasn't terribly recent in golf terms....We haven't seen either of them in two months, and that can be an eternity.
And while there are more of that ilk, you can see the logic. Phil wins the gamesmanship award, but when it devolves into actual golf, Tiger is the more consistent grinder.
However, these folks beg to differ:
Alan Shipnuck: Phil. Tiger is an introvert and a grinder — he’s trying hard, but this isn’t his kind of deal. Mickelson is a showman who thrives on action, and match play is a better fit for his all-or-none game.Patrick Ralph: Phil. It’s clear that Tiger owns several acres of real estate in Phil’s head, but I love Phil’s confidence and enthusiasm leading up to The Match. He’s going to be much more in his element than Tiger, and he clearly cares about it more. I think it results in a win for Lefty.Jonathan Wall: Phil. Lefty has been grinding and game-planning for The Match as if it were a major. He’ll trash talk his way to victory and cash those plus-money tickets at the window on the way out of town.Sean Zak: Phil because Tiger will be uncomfortable with being mic’d up (I cannot substantiate that claim).
If Lefty does for today only half of that he's done for the U.S. Ryder Cup effort.... well, you guys can fill in the rest... But the logic is that if Tiger isn't discombobulated by Phil's antics, he should win.
When all is said and done, though, 18 holes of match play is a crapshoot, so better to view it as reality television. Big Break - Shadow Creek, a sit were....
Those writers tackle on last question:
What ‘Match’ do you want to see next?
Hmmm... how about Hogan-Nelson v. Venturi-Ward? Hey, Bamberger isn't the only insufferable purist....
Shipnuck: Tiger and Phil aren’t exiting stage right after this one – it’s their franchise, after all, so any future matches have to include them. So I’ll say Tiger-Phil vs. DJ-Brooks.
Dethier: Shippy’s right, these two will be involved…gimme a live draft, a bit like the NBA’s new all-star game. Each captain (Tiger and Phil) picks three teammates. Each team of four forms two alternate shot pairs and switches partners every six holes.
Confused? Me too. But I wanna see how that draft goes down.
Bleier: I’d like to see all of the guys who’ve held the No. 1 spot over the past couple of months go head to head: DJ vs. Brooks vs. JT vs. Justin Rose.
Bastable: Bond vs. Goldfinger rematch.
I do like that last one, but promise me that in the team match against the Bash Bros. that DJ and Brooks will not be mic'ed.... They're not reality TV material.... Of course, Paulina in that Oakmont pull-down microskirt could change my mind here...
Sens: Spieth vs. Reed. I’m tempted to say DJ vs Koepka, which would likely make for greater pyrotechnics. But I like the idea of this latent Good vs. Evil rivalry and it would be entertaining to hear a mic’d-up Spieth talk smack, in a Ned Flanders-swearing kinda way.Zak: Reed vs. Spieth. Too bad only half of that hypothetical match actually wants it to happen.
As Shippy said elsewhere, Patrick doesn't figure to be invited into the cool-kids club, though he is surprisingly in next weeks TigerJam in The Bahamas. More likely would be Tiger-Phil taking Jordan and JT.....
Marksbury: Do you think anyone would tune in to watch a couple of no-name 20-handicappers battle it out for a million dollars? I would! Aside from that, I love the idea of involving some stars from the women’s game, like Lexi and Michelle, Ariya and Inbee. I also think any European player — Poulter, Rory — facing Patrick Reed would be entertaining. And for something a little off the wall, how about Steph Curry-Tony Romo?
No doubt they'll get to the ladies, but does anyone remember how terrible that event with Annika and Karrie Webb was? But the no-names was exactly the premise of Big Break (as well as the Golf Digets bit before the U.S. Open), and watching no-names fight the pressure can be great drama.....
I have no clue who will win, and the timing couldn't be worse for me. I have a prior family commitment which will preclude my presence in front of a television before 5:30 or so. I've deputized Employee No. 2 to report on behalf of Unplayable Lies, but with Lumpy not in the field I worry about her attention span.
I will probably blog the event tomorrow morning, though you'll quickly identify the key word therein.
Udder Stuff - I shan't keep you long, but both major magazines have given out their prestigious Turkey Awards, to which attention must be paid. Of course, the both lede with golf's answer to Dale Carnegie:
The Pepé le Pew Award for Stinking up Paris
Winner: Patrick Reed
After a fetid Ryder Cup performance at Le Golf Nacional, Reed further befouled the atmosphere outside Paris by blaming others for his poor showing. Frustrated? Fair enough. But in his petulance, Captain America came off more as a self-pitying villain than the hero we’d been hoping for.
C'mon, the poor guy was blindsided.... Though GD wins this little match-up because they also included those Red Sox tix. You remember, the ones in the "Line drive section".
But fun to be reminded of these fun times:
The John Gruden Freeze the Field Goal Kicker Award for Delaying Play
Winner: JB Holmes
In the span of a lifetime, four minutes isn’t much. But from the fairway of a par-five, it’s pretty much forever. Which is how long Holmes took over his second shot on the closing hole at Torrey Pines, an agonizing lag that left his playing partner, Alex Noren, in the lurch with the Farmers Insurance Open hanging in the balance. To make matters worse, Holmes, who was two shots off the lead, finally put an end to his human rain delay by laying up into the rough.
Four minutes of our lives we'll never get back.
Kudos to Golf Digest for exhuming the story of Rhein Gibson - Brandon Davis contretemps that cost the former a stroke at a Web.com event. It's a fine example of the rules of the game being an ass, but of greater interest is the hostage video posted later by Davis in which he does his spot-on Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed impression:
It's OK, you can thank me later...
I can't top that, so I'll let you get on with your day.
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