They – presumably promoters who have run out of stuff for motorcycles to jump over and things for Conor McGregor to do – are priming the pump now for a $10 million match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
It’s a winner-take-all-but-surely-both-guys-profit format.
As far back as May, at the Players Championship, Mickelson was floating this idea, playing the role of golf’s Don King: “Why don't we just bypass all the ancillary stuff of a tournament and just go head-to-head and just have kind of a high-stakes, winner-take-all match? Now, I don't know if he wants a piece of me, but I just think it would be something that would be really fun for us to do, and I think there would be a lot of interest in it if we just went straight to the final round.”
He had hoped to do it the first part of July. “We’re working on a different date,” Mickelson told Golf Magazine. Just as soon as possible, he said.
This would be the golf version of a karaoke competition between Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. Or a Jane Seymour vs. Bo Derek beauty contest. All big names whose greatest hits are behind them – but still oddly compelling.
The question each of us must face when an actual date and place are set is: Will I care?
Especially if this is a pay-per-view arrangement. How much would you pay to watch a two-man golf match, guys who between them already have career earnings of $198 million? Add that’s not counting all the sponsorship gravy.
Woods is 42. Mickelson 48. The former is 10 years removed from his last major championship, the other five years past his last one. And yet they remain the only two personalities in their sport even remotely capable of pulling off something like this. Yes, for the hundredth time to the guy who writes the angry emails about us writing too much Tiger: This is why.
Would a pay-per-view round of golf sell, if it also doesn’t include at least one round in a steel cage? Now, that would be entertainment, so long as Mickelson keeps his shirt on.
There are, on the surface, a couple of issues with the proposal.
The money, for one. It’s not their own. Let’s say they reported to the course in separate Brinks trucks, filled with some of that hard-earned arthritis medicine and Bridgestone golf-ball sponsorship money. Winner takes both home, but not until after he swan dives into a pit of unwrapped bills.
Otherwise, where is the kind of competitive pressure that makes watching golf worthwhile? They can’t hope to re-create the kind of tension wrapped around the back nine of a major on Sunday. Great golfing duels are Nicklaus and Watson at Turnberry in 1977 or Nicklaus and Palmer at Oakmont in 1962. It’s not Woods and Mickelson, with the only trophy being another deposit into one overstuffed account.
When he heard Mickelson’s suggestion back at the Players, Woods joked in response, “We’ll play for whatever makes him uncomfortable.” Nothing about the reported arrangement would make either the slightest bit uncomfortable. It’s not even a splinter in either man’s ego. It’s just another payday.
And what is there really little left to prove between the two rivals who have discovered a measure of buddy-hood here in mid-life? Woods took care of that years ago.
And then there’s the site. They’ve discussed a predictable Las Vegas venue, which, after all, is where anything even the slightest bit sketchy goes. A truly important event should be staged on one of the game’s classic courses, none of which are built in a desert. Surely the members at Augusta National would be happy to host such a proceeding that has a slightly “Caddyshack” feel to it. (Remembering here the immortal words of Judge Smails: “Gambling is illegal at Bushwood, sir. And I never slice.”)
For nearly 40 years, “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf” staged made-for-TV matches. Remember the Skins Game in the fall? This Woods-Mickelson match is not a new idea. Just a more expensive one.
So, if and when it happens, will I care?
Some part of me will – the part that glances at the tabloid headlines at the supermarket, the part that laughs at someone else’s embarrassing mistakes, the part that should know better but just can’t help itself.
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