Come the end of the summer, there’s always a certain sense of golf overload. We’ve had four men’s majors, five women’s majors, the Olympic Games for both sexes, and we’ve got the Solheim Cup, Presidents Cup and Amgen Irish Open over the next fortnight.
So when it was announced that Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler were pencilled in to take on Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau in a made-for-TV match in Las Vegas in December, it was hard to get too excited about it.
Since ‘The Match’ debuted with Phil Mickelson taking on Tiger Woods in 2018, it hasn’t exactly been a roaring success. The ‘Champions for Charity’ match in 2020 when sport had largely been non-existent for the previous two months was the pick of the bunch, but absence making the heart grow fonder and Tom Brady ripping the ass off his trousers were the primary reasons there.
Since then, Brooks versus Bryson was noteworthy because of the longstanding feud they’d been engaged in, and the Rory, Max Homa, Lexi Thompson and Rose Zhang 12-hole skins game earlier this year at least gave us the opportunity to see the men and women play side-by-side.
So where will the Scottie and Rory versus Brooks and Bryson match fall? As great a golfer as Scheffler is, he’s not exactly known for his outgoing personality. Koepka is similarly stoic on the course, although he’s well known for taking shots off of it. Rory and Bryson are much more talkative, much more animated, and overall, much more interesting personalities, but the good thing about this latest iteration of ‘The Match’ is that it’s going to be just that, a match.
Skins is a terrible format, one that’s worse to watch than it is to play, but because the PGA Tour had a made-for-tv skins game every December, that seems to have been the format of choice ever since.
What we’re getting promised with this match is a Ryder Cup style match, incorporating foursomes, fourball and singles. One can only assume that it’ll be broken into six-hole matches with four total points up for grabs, and that’ll be a much, much better option for the viewing public.
Neither the PGA Tour nor LIV Golf are involved in this, so any suggestions that this is evidence of the drawn-out negotiation process coming to a close are wishful thinking. This isn’t about the PGA Tour or LIV, this is about four of the best golfers in the world giving us something to watch on a random Tuesday (I’m guessing here, but it’s unlikely to be at the weekend anyway) in the depths of the bleak mid-winter.
That’s all it is, but that’s enough. And there’s a better than good chance that it’s the best in the series to date.
And if the organisers have any sense of theatre, they’ll deliver us Bryson versus Rory in the singles portion. The U.S. Open trophy won’t be on the line, but at least it will bring the memories back.