I live in Canada, and Friday isn’t a “Holiday” up here, but I’m taking a vacation day and plan on watching. For those of you unaware it’s a PPV event, 18 holes of golf winner takes all with a $9 Million dollar prize. They will also be doing impromptu side bets between each other during the round. And apparently Phil, Tiger and their caddies will be mic’d the whole time.
I’m still a big Tiger fan, I believe he revolutionized the game with his fitness and practice regime. But don’t get me wrong if Tiger never was, I can almost guarantee another young buck would have come along and did the same for the game (don’t know if they would have been quite so dominating).
Anyway, I was glad to see hints of the “old Tiger” this season. I fully believe Tiger will destroy Phil. 8 months ago, I would probably have given the edge to Phil because of how crappy Tiger had been playing, but he seems to be hitting his stride while Phil is starting to slip.
I saw today they already made their first side bet. Phil bet $100k that he would birdie the first hole, Tiger said lets double that! So already there is a $200k side bet on the first hole!
I gotta admit, this sounds like fun and I’m not a golf fan at all. I have no intention of ponying up for it, but if it were on regular cable/OTA TV, I’d totally watch it.
There’s no jeopardy involved and no benefit to the victor other than even more cash than they already have. The winner will have no bragging rights seeing as they have been in constant “combat” over the last 20+ years. It isn’t like a once-in-a-career heavyweight clash.
If their head-to-head were a play-off, the result of being tied after 72 holes at a major then *there *is your interest and drama. A manufactured show like this? pointless. The equivalent of Jesse Owens racing a horse.
I used to enjoy the past Skins Games. Not terribly interested in this - even if I weren’t going to be involved in a kid’s wedding. Doubt I’ll set the recorder.
If it were on normal TV (or Netflix or something) I’d probably watch, but not in this pay-per-view format. I do like some of the stuff they’re doing with having everybody mic’d and so on, and in general I like when experimental ideas like this are tried out, but overall it’s not close to compelling enough for me to pay.
In match play, Tiger is completely unstoppable and eats absolutely everyone for breakfast. Unless it’s a team event, in which case he’s thrown off his game immediately and struggles to even sniff .500.
I’m only interested in these one-off novelty matches if there’s a clash of styles. Power hitter vs. putting master, precision driver vs. recovery ace, marvel of consistency vs. big risk-taker. I’m not seeing this with Tiger & Phil; they’re both risk-takers who get into contention when they find the mark and get clobbered pretty hard when they don’t. I strongly suspect that this was in the works years ago, and the organizer couldn’t get its crap together before Tiger’s big injury, but it’s already invested monetarily so it’s just trying to salvage whatever it can. I’m pretty sure there’s a similar situation for the yahoos calling for a Serena Williams/John McEnroe showdown which no one else on the goddam planet appears to have a subatomic particle of interest in seeing.
Could be fun, not seeing how, and no way in hell am I paying for it.
