As if Shenanigans At Shadow Creek wasn’t enough.
It sure wasn’t Viva Las Vegas.
What happened in Vegas would hopefully stay in Vegas and end there in Vegas.
No more, no mas, as Roberto Duran might say.
No mas to another cockamamie meeting between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
And here we thought we’d escape 2018 with no more silliness from the world of golf.
Wasn’t the Ryder Cup beat-down embarrassing enough? No, it wasn’t. What golf needed was one more quick, greedy fleecing of the golf-watching public by greed-stricken WarnerMedia and its bratty offspring — Turner Sports.
After some huddling in smoke-filled back rooms somewhere, the Turner executives plotted their way to a Pay-Per-View event that had all that WWE sort of buildup. The poster for the match was messed up — had Woods in the picture holding his finish with a left-handed driver. Nice.
We should have gotten the hint that Something Was Rotten In The State Of Denmark as the Old Bard once wrote in Hamlet.
It was a sad show at best, considering the most entertaining member of the peanut gallery was the rotund Charles Barkley — owner of one of the worst swings in all of golf. Perhaps the intro and then the sorry commentating set the stage for what turned out to be some pretty poor play and very little entertaining conversation from both Philly Mick and El Tigre.
It was one of those “We paid 20 bucks for this?” moments.
In the end, they had to finish in the dark and at least someone had the foresight to drag some event lights to the course so they could set up a rinky-dink 93-yard hole to determine once and for all who would walk off with a whopping $9 million.
Tiger looked like a 10-handicapper trying to figure out what club he could hit 93-yards. They had to play the stupid hole four times before Mickelson finally stuck one close enough to put them both out of their misery. Welcome to the Shadow Creek member-guest conclusion.
Yeah, Philly Mick earned $500,000 per hole for the regulation 18. That $9 million probably paid of most off his gambling debts for the year and maybe, just maybe, he could send Billy Walters a check to make that prison time a bit more tolerable.
So now, via Golf Digest, we get the sad, irritating news.
Like one of those cheesy informercials: WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Seems someone got a few holiday drinks in someone and found out that Tiger and Phil signed a THREE-MATCH DEAL.
Seriously?
Thank-you Stiney. You know he’d have a catch in there somewhere if they wanted Tiger.
There could be another match in 2019 and another in 2020. And that falls right in there with the old P.T. Barnum catch-phrase that there’s a sucker born every minute. Or in the case of this stuff, perhaps as many as a million suckers.
You see, Turner isn’t telling how many souls paid up for the first match. And in a moment of pure justice in the world, things got botched up and they’d end up refunding the $19.99 to everyone who punched the “subscribe” button.
Now that was karma at its best.
To keep our attention, they are rumoring all sorts of scenarios — perhaps Tiger and Phil together vs. some “to be determined ” team or perhaps Tiger picking a partner to play Phil and a partner of his choosing.
Or better still, just have the two of them play putt-putt golf for $9 million.
Whatever it will be, it will be as long as there are suckers willing to pay.
Editor’s Note: After Golf Digest threw the rematches out there, The Great Stiney (aka Mark Stineberg, henchman for Tiger Woods) gave it the old Lee Corso and basically said “not so fast my friend” when he gave this update: “We – and that’s a very big we when I say the Woods camp, the Mickelson camp, the Turner camp – have a lot to talk about,” Steinberg told ESPN.com. “We don’t have any specifics on what it might look like, whether it’s Tiger-Phil, two others, four others.” So apparently Phil and Tiger haven’t put their John Hancocks to the contract but obviously Stiney is working things out because as Greg Norman’s guy, Bart Collins once said: “You can always use an extra million” or in this case, who knows how many millions are dangling out there.
4 Comments
baxter cepeda
Overall it was entertaining Tom. The parties involved will imorove things. Mainly Tiger and Phil do need to pre plan their charity bets because its clearly easy to forget them when playing for so much.
Shane bacon and natalie gulbis should not be in the instigating interviewer position, put chuck and perez (on carts for pace of play).
The playoff needs be improved.
I would like it mano a mano at least once more, unless tiger wins and therefore a third would be necessary.
But cmon tom its fun. And its only going to get better…even Fox got a tiny bit better already.
Tom Edrington
Baxter you are easily entertained….I thought it was pure drudgery…
baxter cepeda
Well if two of the goats cannot keep your attention, may I recommend Sponge Bob Squarepants?
Tom Edrington
Baxter, oh come now, I totally enjoyed all the old Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf episodes, they really captured the conversation between the players so much better and without technology to help, as for Phil and Tiger, Phil is waaaaaay past his prime and Tiger is in the total twilight…….I think they’re both boring when it came to the interaction because keep in mind, they spent their entire careers simply not liking each other so this “friendship” thing is really somewhat phony and comes off that way…..these guys have never hung out together and never will, unlike Nicklaus, Palmer and Player who spent a lot of time in each other’s company during the old Big Three of Golf series….now that was totally cool and FREE.