The Match: A Brief Postmortem

Don't worry, I won't keep you long.  All I can say is that I feel dirty for having let them have their way with me, and I was lucky to only catch the final eleven holes (If you call those last three "holes".

The good news?  I don't think we need to waste our time worrying about who will play in the next of these....

Thirty seconds seems a big ask, but we have to start somewhere:

The Match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson had plenty of action — in their checkbooks early and on the fairways late. The Match went a full 18 holes, plus four

holes of overtime, to everyone’s delight. What did you miss? We’ve got you covered below. 

Who won: Phil Mickelson 

Why it matters: Because Tiger has beaten him his entire career! And because $9 million was on the line! And because it went to 22 holes! Seriously, it was a nice addendum to a rivalry that has spanned many years. Woods usually got the best of Mickelson. Not Friday.

As Rory said, maybe fifteen years ago?  Maybe....

So, who's spinning?  Shippy, you got next?

The Match was billed as a spectacle, but in the end it was just two proud champions playing golf

Playing golf is good....  but that's a very different thing than playing good golf.  I figured Charles Barkley was their insurance policy, and he had the line that will endure as the epithet for this event:

The Turner Sports commentator, who can be seen most frequently on TNT’s NBA

coverage, blasted Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson for their poor play and the lack of quality golf on display during The Match. In fact, Barkley even jokingly said he could beat Tiger and Lefty if he were playing today. 

“This is some crappy golf,” Barkley said when Tiger and Phil were on the 9th hole. “Y’all know that. I could beat these two guys today.”

When you've lost Charles, you've lost the country.

That Shippy item linked above had some moments, most notably Alan calling every watering hole in town to find a place to watch it, when he was unable to order it through his Roku.  But he capture the aural beauty of the day perfectly here:

I never did get the Match to work on my TV, forced instead to watch it on my laptop. (For free. Seems like a bad business model but what do I know?) It was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. The announcers wouldn’t stop raving about Shadow Creek’s aesthetics but my eyes kept going to the aeration holes on the greens. There was breathless talk about the use of the world’s largest drone for beauty shots but its buzzing was so loud it was a distraction on nearly every shot on the opening holes. I was excited to have the players mic’d up, until Phil’s heavy mouth-breathing and Tiger’s snotty sniffles hijacked the broadcast.

We'll get to the free bit in a sec, but the heavy breathing and obstructed nasal passages were a bit off-putting...  They sounded like old men.

As for this bit which I missed, he makes it sound compelling:

The single most exciting moment of the front nine came on the par-3 7th hole, with its $200,000 closest-to-the-pin side bet. Woods went first and came up well short of a back-right pin, his ball rolling backward to 40 feet. Mickelson hit pretty much the same shot, and as his ball trickled back the slope the suspense was delicious. His shot expired a couple feet closer to the hole than Tiger’s, earning an ignominious windfall.

To his credit, Phil did promise major-like intensity.... Seriously, 40 feet?

At least the play was better than the technology, though that's setting the bar pretty damn low:

Word began to trickle out across social media early Friday afternoon as thousands tried to access Bleacher Report’s live stream of the Tiger-Phil match in Las Vegas: There seemed to be a problem. 

Users visiting the Bleacher Report site to pay for access to The Match were, well, unable to pay for access to The Match. 

ESPN media reporter Darren Rovell was all over the malfunction. “Bleacher Report Live stream slow or not working,” he wrote on Twitter. 

But as the afternoon wore on, users began to notice a change: the link to the B/R live stream was suddenly going through for free.

File this away under #youhadonejob.

Marty Kauffmann covers the TV beat for Golfweek, and he wasn't amused:

“This is some crappy golf. Y’all know that,” Charles Barkley saidmidway through the round. “These guys aren’t playing well. Listen, I know I’m not good, but I could beat

these two today. Maybe it’s nerves or whatever, but they’re both playing awful today.”

“The Match has been a game of mistakes,” analyst Darren Clarke said. 

In a rare epiphany, analyst Peter Jacobsen summarized Woods’ feeble birdie attempt on 16 with pleasing simplicity: “Underwhelming.” 

The same could be said of the entirety of “The Match.” Somewhere early in the round, Turner began offering the coverage free of chargeon its BR/Live site. That’s roughly the amount the entire coverage was worth.

And this:

This was a mess from the outset. I’m always open to new producers bringing new ideas to golf coverage, but Turner Sports’ production team – headed by Craig Barry, executive producer Michael Mandt and line producer Jeff Neubarth – made a totally predictable error. 

Seriously, I predicted this a week ago. Despite having the players mic’ed up, Turner Sports cluttered the coverage with seven announcers. Or maybe it was nine. I lost count. All I know is, it was at least seven announcers too many. 

Time and again, anchor Ernie Johnson or Jacobsen or Clarke or someone else insisted on chattering when Mickelson and Woods were talking to each other or their caddies. 

Johnson kept saying, “Let’s listen in,” as if he were doing viewers a favor by allowing them to hear what Woods and Mickelson were saying on course.

Shack was all over this as well, so hold that thought.  One last bit from Marty:

“I want to hear some more smack, I want to hear some more action,” analyst Pat Perez said late in “The Match.” “I want to see some more betting. But we also need some golf shots, some more good golf shots. These are the two icons of my generation. I want to see better shots.” 

But no, Woods and Mickelson remained poker-faced, hovering over their chips, playing it close to the vest. This wasn’t a duel in the desert. This was a battle of attrition, ultimately settled under the lights on a makeshift, 93-yard par-3 hole. 

The finale seemed so small, so unsatisfying. And yet, so appropriate.

And yet, like beating one's head against the wall, it felt so good when it mercifully ended.

So, Shack has a long, thoughtful post under this header:

The Match: The Great, Good, Bad And Ugly

The great?  This can't need much bandwidth, can it?  OK, whatcha got?

Charles Barkley - He should have been on the full broadcast, in hindsight. He got right to the point as Tiger and Phil struggled horrible to read Shadow Creek’s greens. He jousted as only he can with Justin Verlander’s Tweets, too. But sadly, Barkley also was not around for the last couple of hours to put a bow.

Alas, I was.....What else?

The Audio - Turns out, a feed of just open microphones would have been enough for most people. Phil was in hard sell mode early but once he settled into a normal round of golf, basically narrated the proceedings. Tiger chimed in with enough to make a player-only feed functional had that been an option. Yes, Phil was winded at times and a breather was distracting, but the real potential for this production came together as both players had driven beautifully down the 6th, the cameras were tight to both players as we could hear each in between clubs for the approach. The kind of gripping cinematic moment that the organizers had envisioned.

Like Marty above, this one I called.  We all know that audio has greatly improved on golf broadcasts in recent years, and it's a great thing.  But mostly the networks don't expose us to the raw feeds, they replay only the interesting bits for us....  They do that for a reason, that most of what an open mic picks up is drivel. 

I didn't have the benefit of hearing the front nine audio, and perhaps there was some charm to Phil's hard-sell mode.  But by the time I tuned in with them on the 11th hole, there wasn't much of interest, and what there was was subject to the announcing team talking over it. 

One last item:

ShotLink Putt Probables - A simple graphic told us how far the player was from the hole and his career make percentage (ShotLink era) from that distance. Simple, clean and informative.

And yet, they made none of them....  It's fine, but we get make percentages on the network broadcasts as well.

In your humble blogger's opinion, only Charles lives up to the tag, and he only mattered because he was willing to call the guys out for their horrible play.  Shall we look at the good?

Live Drone Shot Down The First Fairway - It was pretty cool to move from one last player interview to a live shot down the first fairway. Unfortunately, the technology appeared limited from there on out. Perhaps too many competing cell signals?

Sorry, didn't see it, but yet another technology fail in an event whose broadcast quality was pretty God-awful.

Pat Perez - he sounded engaged and as someone who knew the players, through in a few opinionated remarks about being surprised that Tiger was giving putts and at how they were orchestrating the charity-driven side bets. And not one F-bomb!

Meh!  I did see most of the pregame, and I expected way more from Pat as the only real golfer on that panel.  he didn't tell me a single thing I didn't already know...

Hole Graphics - animated hole graphics with tracer technology may have been the most vibrant and eye-catching I’ve seen. Once it was clear the drone was not reliable and the drone flyovers were needed, these jumped out as adding a futuristic feel to the telecast.

Tiger Woods’ Generosity - Wow was that many giving putts! But they all helped in the interest of pace of play and entertainment value of the match. This is a nice way of saying he twice prevented (possibly) having The Match end on a missed putt. Phil returned the favor once, by my count.

Phil Mickelson Wearing A Mic - He should be in the great category, but the hard sell mode a few times (how great is this? how great was Samuel Jackson?) dings the performance a bit. I love how he went off topic with the PGA Tour’s Mark Russell, with brother Tim Mickelson and with others. That’s about how Phil plays a normal round of golf and he gave a window into the types of conversations he has. If only…

Again, this is really slim pickings.... 

Shall we take a dive into the next two categories? 

The Bad

Announcers Talking Over Players - Everyone was guilty at some point and I’m sympathetic to the cause as this was not a normal broadcast crew, not a normal match and an unprecedented amount of sound for a sporting event to take in. Still, to miss out on Mickelson asking Russell about a rule of golf change he just does not comprehend and several other side chats about shots, was tough for the core golf fan. The more novice viewer may prefer announcer storytelling, which is why lead announcer Ernie Johnson trampled over so much talk.

The Champion’s Belt - sensational buckle design, simple brown leather look but uh, it didn’t fit Phil Mickelson, who looked visibly annoyed he couldn’t put it on. Next time, let’s make two belts, one for those with subcutaneous fat and one for those without. 

Ernie Johnson - As Phil Mickelson is looking through his rangefinder for a yardage, Ernie Johnson is telling us on the 18th hole that Phil “has the laser out.” Somewhere Frank Chirkinian was screaming. Unfortunately, Johnson regularly spoke over on-course conversations, stated the obvious (what we saw on screen) and did not embellish the action. He would have been better served by having his Inside the NBA counterpart Charles Barkley in the booth, perhaps.

Natalie Gulbis - She appeared for some first hole observations and surfaced again at the 18th tee for a bad interview after Tiger’s chip-in. Her absence in between was not missed.

Lots to gnaw on here, first to note that our feed cut off quite abruptly before the award of the champion's belt.  I'd love to fight with my cable provider over that, but the whole thing was so damn amateurish, and it was a relief when the screen went dark.

 Care for some ugly?  Though I'm guessing that Geoff will need a bigger blog:

The Playoff Hole - a wise move by promoters to be ready for a tight match and sudden death, the 93 yard shot required a hole location change and had a strange feel to it given the amount of money at stake.

Watching them cut that new hole was really bizarre... 

Capital One Ads - Presented in Playing Through mode as we saw golfers walking off the tee, we missed out on match discussions to be annoyed by Samuel Jackson and Charles Barkley asking what’s in our wallet. Better than Capital One cafe spots, but still pretty annoying commercials given that some of us paid for the match.

Of course I was excited to see what was in Samuel L. Jackson's wallet, but wasn't this broadcast promised to be without commercials?   I need a shower, perhaps a long one...

Gambling - All of the stakeholders learned a valuable lesson today: golf is tricky to bet on and real-time gambling is even trickier. While Mark Broadie supplied some stats that were of note. But the whirlwind nature of a two-man golf match—yes it moved amazingly fast—made it hard to embed bets or betting scenarios to enjoy. The most interesting pointed out may have been at the 7th tee when we learned the great 5-1 price punters got on the match being even after nine, was in play. Otherwise, the action moved too fast for fun gaming.

I know gambling is supposed to save our game, but it was really feeble....  The putting odds and  Broadie's probabilities are interesting, but when they're missing four-footers badly (Tiger, I'm talking to you), what's the point?

Gambling 2 - We heard about what MGM punters were betting on each hole but was it interesting to hear what punters were putting on each hole, without any real reason to be better players on particular holes? Not at all.

I'm not the perfect tour guide for this portion of the programming, as I'm not much of a sports better.  But I think my pre-match calls look pretty good, in that ultimately the underlying sporting event has to deliver on that basis, in which they failed miserably.

Shadow Creek - The course lived up to its name, serving up shadows while the late light hit the treetops. This created an unimpressive look to a course once ranked in Golf Digest’s top ten in the U.S. Add on the excess of Flinstone rocks, strategically-light design and tree overplanting, and Shadow Creek did not pop. The course exuded underwhelming television appeal in part because of the odd lighting situation. The 17th hole was deemed a genuine centerpiece but came off looking like something even waterfall lover Donald Trump would say was sooooo last century.

That portion that I saw was quite underwhelming....  But the shadows, encroaching darkness and use of lights all contributed to the Mickey Mouse atmospherics.

AT&T/Turner/Bleacher Report Synergy - Seen as the future of sports broadcasting, the inability to conduct normal transactions and ensuing decision to give away a pay-per-view match overshadowed everything. The disastrous rollout of the supposed future of broadcasting and sports packaging provided a stark reminder that the rush to usher in a new era is just that: rushed.

That's just priceless.....  The only purpose to this event was to grab that Jackson from each of us, and they screwed that up.  Really, you can't make this up...

To sum up, that guy that pegged it as "Putrid and pathetic " yesterday?  Like Phil on the front nine, he's guilty of overselling....  Please, no more of these.