There are people mad about the celebration of all the money up for grabs at The Match. Settle down and enjoy it!
In the days preceding The Match, a backlash among stuffy and cranky golf circles bubbled up against the entire endeavor. The sentiment was that this was a grotesque indulgence and that the celebration of the money surrounding the competition actually cheapened it. The European press, and some players, seemed particularly bothered by the public embrace of the purse size.
This makes no sense. Why apply any golf standards or sensibilities to an experiment that is trying to be so far removed from the glut of golf events we get the other 51 weeks of the year? Why try to make it look anything like a normal broadcast? Go over the top and get crazy. Try to promote it and stand out and make it look like something completely unique that’s maybe, possibly worth spending your $20 on. I may be getting carried away here but you get the point, and that is not to be tethered to any notion of what golf should look like or worrying about the media and traditional golf voices like Nick Faldo getting hot and bothered.
For all the 14 years of my TV career it’s been so heavily frowned upon to mention prize money...now this?! @PGATOUR#I’mconfused https://t.co/SfluARoIhE
— Sir Nick Faldo (@NickFaldo006) November 22, 2018
Does Phil look goofy posing like that? Yes. Should they care that people are mad about them promoting the money aspect of this match? No.
A one-day windfall
The purse size for The Match is $9 million and it will be winner-take-all and yes, it is not their own money. Of course, both players are going to make out handsomely this weekend. No one is walking away empty-handed and both camps will be getting a nice payday. One may just be $9 million more than the other.
Mickelson has repeatedly said they needed a number that would make them feel uncomfortable. That number is apparently $9 million. The original hyped number was $10 million but that was knocked down when, reportedly, the PGA Tour got involved. The Tour’s premiere event is the FedExCup, and the winner of that season-long race has always won a grand bonus payout of $10 million.
The FedExCup is making a massive jump to $15 million for the winner next year. But that windfall comes after a season of a strong play that is continued through three playoff events. This is the biggest single-day or single-tourney payout that we’ve seen for a golf event. Here are some of the biggest purses on the PGA Tour from 2018:
- U.S. Open— $2.16 million of $12 million purse
- Masters/PGA Championship/The Players — $1.98 million of $11 million purse
- British Open— $1.89 million of $10.5 million purse
- WGC Championships — $1.7 million of $10 million purse
- CJ Cup $1.71 million of $9.5 million purse
- 4 FedExCup Playoff events — $1.62 million of $9 million purse
Those are some massive payouts, but nothing comes close to the kind of winner-take-all pot on the line at The Match. And it’s probably going to two of the players most deserving.
Side bet surplus
The other money changing hands on Friday will be put up in side bets. Both Tiger and Phil are, allegedly, putting their own money up for these wagers. Phil predicted on Tuesday that the total amount bet will get into seven figures and maybe into the $2 million range. The winnings will go to the charities of their choice.
There is already a $200k bet on the first hole alone. Here’s the exchange that was definitely not at all planned to generate extra juice for the PPV event a couple days out from the start.
PHIL MICKELSON: So I’ve thought a lot about this, and there are spots out on the course that are some great spots for a little challenge. The challenges are coming directly out of our pockets, okay? I feel like 1st hole is a great hole for me. In fact, I’m willing to risk $100,000 to say I birdie the 1st hole. That’s how good I feel heading into this match. You don’t have to take it. You don’t have to take it at all.
TIGER WOODS: No. Hold on, hold on.
PHIL MICKELSON: I’m going to throw that out there.
TIGER WOODS: So you think you can make birdie on the 1st hole?
PHIL MICKELSON: I know I’m going to make birdies on the 1st hole.
TIGER WOODS: Double it.
PHIL MICKELSON: Did you see how I baited him like that? Yes! Yes! 200 says I birdie the 1st hole.
The side bets, to me, will be the most interesting and entertaining part of the broadcast. There will be predictive odds on the screen based on course mapping data and the players’ ShotLink profiles so you can see real-time if a side bet or challenge is particularly unwise and reckless. There also, as far as we’ve been told, is no real limit to what a side bet can or cannot cover. They could start coming on every hole and multiple times per hole.
Deserve got something to do with it
Tiger Woods propelled the PGA Tour to riches not previously conceived. Phil Mickelson will be the first to tell you the economic impact that Tiger has had on the game.
“When I came out on Tour, in 1992, or when I won the Tucson Open (as an amateur) the purse — the entire purse — and the winners check was $180,000,” Mickelson said last year on the TV show Feherty. “I remember thinking in the mid 90s, ‘I wonder if some day we’ll play for a million dollar first-place check. I don’t know, probably not in my lifetime, but I hope we do.’ And now we do every week, and that’s because of Tiger.”
Phil has repeated this line throughout the year and again this week in their pre-Match press conference. Mickelson is a major draw, but Tiger is the one that changed the economic model for the Tour.
You can say he deserves or doesn’t deserve the $9 million or think it might be grotesque, but there are a lot of golfers worldwide on multiple tours that have made millions because of Tiger. His earnings based on that impact alone are probably not what they should have been — as my friends at No Laying Up have said, there should be “Tiger Tax” he could collect on almost every Tour paycheck from the last 20 years. There are players you probably have never heard of and will never hear of finishing in 8th place at some random event you may have never heard of banking nice six-figure checks because of the way Tiger took the PGA Tour and its sponsors into the money-bath era. So let’s chill out on the disgust about the cash at The Match.