It was The Match! Two champions, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were to face each other in an 18-hole match at the Shadows Creek Golf Course in Nevada. Everything looked perfect, and Woods had won an event just two months prior. The fans were excited to see him win again. The only way to watch The Match in 2018 was through pay-per-view. The event producers, Turner Sports, introduced the first golf match to be accessed through cable or direct TV and Bleacher Report Live but through pay-per-view.
Right as Mickelson and Woods geared up on the first tee, things went haywire for the viewers and producers. Even after purchasing the product, the fans could not get on. Turner Sports’s then-president, David Levy, talked about the famous bout at the Fairway to Heaven podcast and said, “On B/R Live we had a lot of subscribers signing on; we took their money, and all of a sudden we could not get through the Amazon firewall.” The match could be seen through TV and cable, but B/R Live suffered a glitch, and the fans were getting impatient. They had bought it for $19.99 and wanted to see it immediately.
Levy had to risk it all. He either could let the paywall be there or remove it and then everyone—those who paid and who didn’t—gets to watch. It could either be the worst pay-per-view experience for the fans or the best match they had seen of Woods & Lefty. Levy chose the latter; eventually, the paywall was removed, and everyone watched the 2018 edition of The Match for free. The downside? Levy said, “As far as the pay-per-view and the money side from the pay-per-view side, my friends on the cable side didn’t pay us a dime… We got no pay-per-view money from the entire event.”
So, they had to refund those who already purchased the pay-per-view, and the cable guys didn’t pay them either. You could call the match a failure. But the former president of Turner Sports accepted that from the viewership side, the event was a success with more than a million fans tuning in, even though they failed to profit from it.
However, despite the paywall being removed, the first edition of The Match was not as amusing as people expected it to be.
Tiger Woods and Lefty’s match was awkward for a while
Nobody had ever seen Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods go head-to-head like this before. It was huge! But as the pay-per-view initially disappointed the fans, Mickelson and Woods did too. For the first nine holes, Woods and Mickelson were truly awkward with each other as they adjusted. At the first hole, Mickelson missed a birdie putt chance and the $200K bet put on him that he would make it.
Although he missed it, Woods still appreciated him and said, “Good speed,” but Lefty never responded or even lifted his head. It was quiet and awkward for a while; as for the first few holes, the fans could only hear Mickelson’s heavy breathing and Woods’s constant sniffles as his allergies were awakened. When the 6-time major champion was finally ready to talk, he had to talk to anyone within a few feet of him but Woods, as he was being himself on the greens, nontalkative or expressing anything.
After the first nine holes went like that, on the back, finally things started to fire up. The two started going back and forth with birdies and par, and eventually, after a par at the 18th hole, the match went to sudden death. The first hole was a par again, and at the specially made par-3, Woods could not drain it in, but Mickelson made a birdie and took the $9 million home. It was probably an overwhelming experience for golfers and underwhelming for fans as it was the first. But the two met again with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady for the Match II, and that was probably better than the first time.
