I THINK I must be the only person on the planet who has not seen the new John Lewis Christmas advert, apart from, say, the village elder of the Huli Wigmen tribe in the remote reaches of Papua New Guinea. Oh, hold on. Apparently he watched it the other night.
By all accounts, the sight of a reflective Elton John plonked at his piano in a goonie is so tear-jerking and heartstring tugging, great swathes of the population have been left blubbering uncontrollably at their tellies at what is, essentially, a commercial for a bloomin’ shop. It’s probably not the first time that folk have been moved by the bold Elton tinkling his, ahem, ivories in front of them.
Old Reginald Dwight has always been a bit of a showman and, here in the world of golf, two of the Royal & Ancient game’s showmen will strut their stuff this weekend when Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson do their own version of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf in their made-for-TV, $9 million shoot-out known as The Match in Las Vegas.
Given the history of this twinkling playground in the Nevada desert, you half expect Woods and Mickelson to pitch up in rhinestone jumpsuits. This is the place, after all, where the great Elvis Presley saw out his final years; not in the lunging, hip-shoogling majesty of his gyrating pomp, however, but in a largely sorry, mumbling, bloated nostalgia-fest that almost bordered on self-parody.
If the way Woods and Mickelson played at the Ryder Cup is anything to go by, this could be a performance as wonky as The King forgetting the words during a rambling rendition of Are You Lonesome Tonight?.
To many, this Vegas vulgarity is so needless in its ostentation, it’s broadly equivalent to Evel Knievel louping the fountains of Caesars Palace on a gold-plated Harley Davidson and landing in the gaping jaws of one of Siegfried and Roy’s white tigers. At least there are
lumps of the colossal prize fund now going to charity and not straight into the pockets of the protagonists.
Nevertheless, the whole production has certainly divided opinion and generated various levels of interest. There are plenty, and a good chunk of them will be non-golf fans, more than keen to tune into this contrived rivalry. Others, like shoulder-shrugging Rory McIlroy, couldn’t give two hoots. “If they had done it 15 years ago it would have been great, but nowadays it’s missed the mark a bit,” he said recently.
But even 15 years ago, when there was at least a certain animosity between the two, there wasn’t much of a genuine rivalry on the course as Tiger held the game in a double nelson while Phil wheezed on under the strain. “Fifteen years ago my record against him sucked,” conceded Mickelson in the build-up to this weekend’s showpiece which is so manufactured you’ll just about have to put it together with an Allen key.
But what if it is a rip-roaring success and the format gains a bit of traction? In these times of grab-all-you-can revenue streams, the likes of McIlroy et al could be next in line for a bumper pay day if promoters, sponsors and TV chiefs decide that head-to-head showdowns featuring the game’s main movers and shakers are more of a goer than a gimmick.
The problem, of course, is that none of the younger generation whip up the same kind of wide-ranging frenzy of interest as Woods does. You could probably plonk him in a televised 18-hole shoot-out with Norrie from Hollandbush and more folk would tune into that than a joust between McIlroy and, say, Brooks Koepka. And that remains something of an issue for golf. By far the game’s biggest draw remains a 42-year-old with a re-built back. Who does golf turn to when he’s finally gone?
This weekend’s Thanksgiving bout will be a clash of the ageing titans who boast 123 PGA tour wins between them. But you can justifiably argue that the likes of David Duval, Ernie Els or Vijay Singh were greater rivals to Woods than Mickelson was back in the 1990s and into the noughties. The Match? More like The Mismatch.
As golf continues to scrap for relevance in
a jam-packed sporting market place, the
public display of two rich veterans getting a bit richer in a forced rivalry is hardly a solution. But then Vegas was always something of a land of make believe …
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