Turner Sports created a unique golf event with The Match. The original event was staged in 2016 and saw Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods go head to head in a match play competition on Black Friday. More than 750,000 people tuned into the stream in the United States that year.
Subsequent editions have been met with significantly less fanfare, including the most recent one, which took place over the weekend. How it was almost missed entirely was a topic of discussion Monday on The Pat McAfee Show.
“I had no idea it was happening and I haven’t even seen any clips from The Match,” co-host AJ Hawk said.
The seventh edition of The Match featured Woods teaming up with Rory McIlroy to take on the team of Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. McAfee said he stumbled upon it almost on accident and he found it on HLN, a place he never would have thought to try if he were looking for it. He said that left him with a lot of questions about what he was seeing.
“What is Tiger golfing at night, first of all, why is he at a driving range and why is this on HLN?”
Pat McAfee gave The Match a positive review. He said that he had watched previous editions and saw great golfers hitting bad shots because they were not taking the competition seriously. He said by contrast, he noticed that Justin Thomas seemed to be “locked in the entire time.”
“They should have told us it was happening,” Hawk fired back, mocking the event’s lack of promotion.
