Thursday Themes

I wasn't gonna blog, but I'm struggling with today's WORDL and an Ask Alan has dropped....

Plus, this bit of silliness...

The Match, A Highly Selective Preview - Hey, something to do on a Saturday night...But seems like they're over-selling, no?

Despite his latest health-related setback, Tiger Woods will play golf this Saturday. We repeat: Tiger Woods will play golf this Saturday.

And while it's not in a real-deal, 72-hole tournament, it will be Woods like you've never seen him before—under the lights, in primetime, alongside teammate Rory McIlroy and the opposing two-man squad of Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. It will be the seventh iteration of Capital One's The Match, a series of made-for-TV match-play events that has previously featured Woods facing off with longtime rival Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka going head-to-head amid their "beef," and, in the most recent edition, NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers teaming up to defeat Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen

Including those back in the day with Duval, Sergio and even Annika, I think we've seen this movie many times, the unifying theme being that they've all pretty much sucked.

If you wanted the dreariest format available....

The format

The format is best ball, meaning each player on each team plays his own ball throughout the round and lowest score of the two players counts as the team score on each hole. For example, if Woods makes a 4 and McIlroy a 3, McIlroy's 3 is their score for the hole. The team with the lowest score on a hole wins that hole. It is only a 12-hole match, which means if one team takes a 3-up lead after 10 holes, the match is over.

I know you can use that primer on best-ball, but can you say "boring"....  This is the extent to which they'll mix it up:

The challenges

There will be five special challenges that will generate donations from the players. On the third hole will be a closest-to-the-hole competition sponsored by DraftKings Sportsbook for up to $1.1 million. At the ninth hole there will be another closest-to-the-hole challenge sponsored by UnitedHealthcare for up to $1.1 million. There also will be a one-club challenge (every player can only use one club on the entire hole) at the fourth, which is sponsored by Capital One, for up to $750,000. Finally, there will be two hole-in-one challenges at the fifth and eighth holes, one sponsored by USAA Insurance and one by Tito's Handmade Vodka. If an ace is made on either hole, $2.5 million will be donated on the team's behalf, and if no hole-in-one is made, $250,000 will be donated on behalf of the team that wins the hole.

Smeels like an insufferable amount of DraftKings promos, no? 

I think they're over-estimating the appetite, don't you?

How to watch

Coverage will begin live on TNT at 6 p.m. ET, on Saturday. Simulcasts also will be available on TBS, TruTV and HLN, in addition to expansive content available across Bleacher Report's platforms leading up to and during the competition. Programming will begin with "The Conversation presented by Deloitte," a roundtable discussion with Woods, McIlroy, Thomas and Spieth hosted by Brian Anderson, who will be calling all the action along with NBA legend Charles Barkley, former Masters winner Trevor Immelman and sports reporter Kathryn Tappen. Preview coverage for The Match will begin immediately after the roundtable dicussion at 6:30 p.m. ET.

For fans looking to check in even earlier, the "Hot Seat Press Conference" will be available at 5:30 p.m. ET on the Bleacher Report app. It will be hosted by former tour pro Smylie Kaufman feature questions field from fans across Bleacher Report's social channels and the B/R app.

I'm sorry, when do they start playing golf?  Because they seem to be copying those World Cup shysters, thinking we'll tune in for an hour of fluff....  I'm guess they won't tee off until about 7:00, though that still requires confirmation.

Will it entertain?  Yeah, why start now?

Hopefully, The Match itself is better than the pre-tournament press conference.

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are set to take on Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas on Saturday evening under the lights at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida. On Wednesday, a Zoom call with all four players failed to create the hype often associated with a boxing match; this was more of a meeting of a mutual admiration society — with a few subtle digs.

“If you told myself and JT in 2012 when we were in college that we’d be playing against these two in a match, that would be a really, really cool thing,” Spieth said. “We want to win it because of how much these guys inspired us.”

Wow, that's some incendiary trash talk there, buys!

There's only one of the four has any bark worth note, though he gets put in his place here:

If you wanted trash talk and bulletin-board material ahead of the 12-hole match, it was sorely lacking from this gabfest. When asked to name the best trash talker of the bunch, McIlroy jumped in and said, “I know who thinks he is the best trash talker, JT.”

We all might be overinterpreting his snarkiness during that second installment, the one during the pandemic.  Then again, there's always this issue:

That may be the case, but Thomas has done battle with Tiger enough to know that he and Spieth are at a significant disadvantage against Woods and McIlroy in terms of on-course achievements.

“It’s kind of hard to trash talk them,” Thomas said. “I feel like on the first tee Jordan and I just need to get it out in the open that, OK, you guys have more majors than us, you have more FedEx Cups than us, you both have an airplane and we don’t, let’s just get that out in the open that way we don’t get it used against us in our match.”

“They’re both quick and witty,” Spieth added. “I was saying to Justin that we might have to take the nice guy route, which isn’t normal for us in these type of matches.”

“Either way, it won’t work,” Woods piped in.

If it makes you feel any better, JT, since 2015 Jordan and you have six majors to Tiger and Rory's one.

I thought I had heard that this guy wasn't on the broadcast:

Fortunately, Charles Barkley returns to the broadcast to add some spice and keep the players on their toes — and hopefully draw out some good barbs between a foursome of competitors that are just a bit too chummy. Tiger noted that in previous years Barkley has had a tendency to speak directly into their earpieces while a player is mid-swing.

“Charles was saying something probably very inappropriate for most of the viewers but it’s going directly into our ear and we can’t respond to him,” Tiger said. “The chatter is good but it’s not quite the chatter we’d normally have amongst ourselves. In this day and age, there are certain words you can’t use. As most of these guys know, my vocabulary is very limited in that regard. Certain words are verbs, nouns and adjectives … and I use the same words for all of them.”

That helps, although I would expect him to have way too much dead air to fill....

The venue might be a reason to tune in, although it's hosted its share of LPGA events.  That is, if you're not put off by the strained attempts to compare it to Augusta National:

If, while watching the latest edition of Capital One’s The Match on Saturday, you’re noticing some similarities between the host layout—Pelican Golf Club—and Augusta National, you’re likely not alone.

The Tampa-area layout’s complicated history spans nearly 100 years, as Donald Ross laid out the initial 18 holes in 1925. First known as Pelican Golf Club before being renamed Belleview Biltmore Golf Club, the course was bought by the town of Belleair in 2013. In 2017, the Doyle family—founders of the Tampa-based DEX Imaging—bought the course with the vision of turning the dilapidated public layout into an exclusive private club.

They called on Beau Welling—a former associate of Tom Fazio and a senior consultant on Woods’ design firm—to revitalize the course, which they billed Pelican Golf Club once again. Finding little information on Ross’ original vision, Welling opted to redesign the course with the characteristics of Ross and other Golden Age architects in mind.

The result is a return to a more classic style of course design that demands proper shot placement to navigate the prominent contouring. The similarities between this West Florida parkland course and Augusta National Golf Club, 480 miles to its north, are numerous.

Like the home of the Masters, Pelican is a second-shot golf course. On the front side, most fairways are at least 40 yards wide, and the back nine opens up even further, with many landing areas 60 yards from edge to edge. Pine straw sits at the base of the few trees that line the fairways, creating a similar aesthetic to Augusta.

Which sounds promising until you look at the accompanying photo and see that the terrain is flat as a pancake.....You know what else is a second-shot golf course.  Yeah, pretty much all of them...

This bit sounds characteristically Rossian:

With expansive fairways and only a few water hazards in play, Pelican instead defends itself with its green complexes, which vary in size but are often large with significant undulations and numerous tiers. LPGA Tour player Brittany Lincicome has noted that the greens are shaped as if elephants are buried underneath.

This, not so much:

Perhaps no hole at Pelican better displays the course’s ode to both Golden Age architecture and Augusta National than the par-3 12th (below), which will play as the eighth hole during Saturday’s 12-hole match. The short par 3 plays about 150 yards over a pond to a Biarritz green that is angled away from the player like the famous 12th at Augusta. The hole made headlines in 2021 during the annual LPGA Tour event held at Pelican, when three players made a hole-in-one and each walked away with a two-year lease on a Lamborghini.

It may be an ode to Golden Age architecture, but I'm unaware of Ross building a Biarritz, and I certainly don't see any here.

It seems weird to me architecturally, as well.  The design logic of a Biarritz is to promote a low running shot to a pin placed on the back tier.  But that left-to-right angle seems to call for a fade, and fades don't run.   At least one reason to watch eight holes.

Alan, Asked - I'm just gonna move on the Alan's mailbag, supplemented where appropriate.  This very much follows my thoughts on Monday:

#AskAlan When is Viktor Hovland going to win a tournament that 1) matters and 2) is not on the water? @the_agrippa

It’s interesting that Viktor’s three PGA Tour victories have come in Puerto Rico/the Riviera Maya to go along with two World Challenge wins in Bermuda. Clearly Hovland plays his best in low-leverage events. I love the guy like everyone else, but it’s hard for me to shake the memories of his defensive and untidy play in the final group on Sunday at St. Andrews. It was the biggest moment of his career, and he retreated. Hopefully that was a hard lesson about winning on the biggest stages: It’s a lot more stressful than a B-list Tour event in paradise, and if you want to be a player who matters you have to embrace the grind.

Yeah, kinda weird and kinda amusing, given those Norwegian roots.  I remember calling BS when he got as high as third in the OWGR, just because those wins seemed so weak.

 But, since we've been agonizing over those OWGR issues, this from Bob Harig is worth noting:

1. Victor Hovland received 29 points from the Official World Golf Ranking for winning the Hero World Challenge. A year ago, he got 48 for winning the same event. The new ranking system that went into place in August has clearly shown that smaller fields—only 20 players in the Bahamas—are impacted with fewer points.

Zero would be better....

#askalan Could LIV have done any worse assembling its 2023 schedule? For a tour with deep pockets I was expecting substantially better venues. Also, why market your tour as international when 60% of the events are in classic U.S. golf markets? Mailed in? @zombo2zombo

Nah, it’s more like many/most desirable courses don’t want to get into bed with LIV. There has already been some private grumbling from the players about the mediocre venues, but no one seems to care enough to go public. To quote one of our great philosophers: It is what it is. As for the balance of domestic and international events, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way: Most of LIV’s biggest names are American, and they’re agreeing to go overseas 40 percent of the time. That’s a pretty high percentage for a group of parochial golfers.

I do so love the questioner's sense of profound disillusionment to learn that Greg Norman et. al. might not be fully as advertised....  The rest of us got there long ago.

But, Alan, what big names?  I'll grant you Cam and DJ, but it's pretty much rabbits form there down....

But isn't this the defining issue of the moment?

In your opinion how many more guys will go to LIV after Jan. 1? @KeithMcConnach1

Well, they need at least a couple more splashy signings, right? Otherwise it will feel like a letdown. But I think the number of attractive candidates is dwindling. Battle lines have pretty clearly been drawn, so if dudes with market value wanted to go they would be gone by now, for the most part.

As you'll know, that's my sense.  I've been saying no one else significant goes, or else they all go.  But, if Alan is correct, that makes LIV dead in the water, no?  Their fields are simply not credible as things now stand, no?

A couple of bits tangentially related.  First, one of the more strident voices in opposition to LIV has, perhaps, been outed:

That players name is Billy Horschel https://t.co/A99GKFFUQq

— LIV Golf Insider (@LIVTracking) December 7, 2022

 To be confirmed, but color me shocked that LIV would reject Billy Ho.... He seems such a perfect fit.

Folks are starting their year-end retrospectives, and this tweet form Alan belongs in them, especially for anyone, like that questioner above, that hasn't taken the full measure of Norman:

I still can’t believe this actually happened. Utter absurdity. https://t.co/lXdsUmIUJf

— Alan Shipnuck (@AlanShipnuck) December 7, 2022

That photo seems to have been cut off, what you're seeing is Greg Norman responding to Shipnuck's text, denying knowledge that a goon was physically removing Alan from a LIV presser, all while watching in real time:

I remain convinced as ever that we can trust all content from Greg Norman....

Just one last in this vein:

Who is going to spill the beans on what Mickelson did or said to Perez’s wife? @teefoat

I hate to be a tease—actually, I love it—but I go deep on this topic in the new afterword I just typed for the paperback edition of “Phil,” which comes out next spring. Buckle up.

It's not just the Perez bit.  Alan had three scandals, not sure whether Pat's was included in that subset.

But I still think I'm due a refund for the hardcover, so I won't be in the market for any additional paid content from Alan.

This certainly won't get him on Jay's Christmas card list:

As it’s impossible to care about “The Match” or what happened at the Hero hit and giggle, I’m more interested in having your absolutely definitive list of next year’s major champions? @DebitStan

Masters: Cam Smith

PGA Championship: Dustin Johnson

U.S. Open: Jon Rahm

Open Championship: Max Homa

I've always thought that playing in LIV exhibitions can't possibly be good preparation, not that those two guys aren't studs.  But, without new defections, they'd need something like this to continue to justify their existence.

This seems, well, naively premature:

The Ryder Cup is now less than a year away. What is your prediction for Rome? I recall you making an infamous prediction for the 2018 Ryder Cup. #askalan @that_is_a_stat

Well, the prediction in question was for long-term U.S. dominance and the Americans have, in fact, won two of the last three Cups after two decades of futility. But the U.S. needs a victory on European soil before we can proclaim this a new era of Yankee hegemony. It’s going to happen in Rome. U.S. wins, 15-13.

Pretty hard to envision given all the uncertainties, both in terms of potential defections, as well as the legal issues (probably a European issue mostly).  I'm just hoping we have a Ryder Cup.

Zero seems the call here:

How many times will Tiger and Phil play golf in the same group before they become ceremonial starters at Augusta? Zero? Maybe one random weekend pairing at a major? @afree8383

Well, Tiger clearly has no interest in being paired with Phil, and the Tour and all of the governing bodies are certainly going to honor that when arranging Thursday-Friday pairings. And both of them making the cut at the same major championship looks increasingly unlikely. So I’m going to go with zero.

But I’m not sure the premise of your question even works because Mickelson may have forfeited his chance to be an honorary starter at the Masters. A friend of mine recently stayed at Augusta National for a few nights, and he reported that many of the green jackets were highly dismissive of Mickelson.

I think Jack Nicklaus is on the verge of ending his era as an honorary starter, which means Gary Player is going to be retired, too. Ben Crenshaw-Tom Watson is an easy choice to hold things down for the ensuing decade, but then what? Nick Faldo has the credentials but not the accrued goodwill. Bernhard Langer and Jose Maria Olazabal are both proud champions but not big enough names. I think Fred Couples is the answer. He would be a hugely popular choice, and Tiger loves him. If Mickelson gets back in the good graces of the green jackets, he can be the third wheel.

On the one hand, who gives a damn about honorary starters.  But, it's really kind of startling the extent to which Phil has s**t where you'd think he intends to keep eating, so I'm sure he'll be content to be an honorary starter for LIV.

Not a great post, I'll agree, but not half-bad for a day on which I had no intention of blogging.