As Max Homa walked off the green after failing to win another hole, he looked out at the crowd and said to the TNT broadcast crew in his ear:
“Everyone out here is like, this Max guy hates charity.”
This is the good stuff, when it’s good. Homa being deadpan and practically hosting a podcast on the course. Rose Zhang, the 20-year-old phenom, showing that she might just be the coolest young star in sports. Rory McIlroy occasionally doing things with a golf club that make the other pros scoff in jealous awe. Lexi Thompson eagling holes to show why she can play in a PGA Tour event — as she did last fall.
The good moments of the ninth iteration of TNT’s The Match, the first with men and women competing side by side, showed Monday what this event can be if they want to keep it going.
The bad moments — he says looking around to make sure DJ Khaled isn’t going to drive in on a golf cart and remind us he beat Charles Barkley — made you wonder how many more holes we have to sit through.
This event isn’t perfect. It’s a television product born from a 2018 pay-per-view match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson that became a pandemic hit in 2020 when the world was so desperate to watch any kind of competition that 6.3 million people tuned in to watch Tom Brady and Peyton…
