Ever since LIV Golf and many of the game’s top stars split away from the PGA Tour, we have yet to have a true head-to-head showdown featuring the two sides of golf’s great divide. Until now.
According to Eamon Lynch at GolfWeek, TNT will air a made-for-TV match featuring arguably the two biggest stars in each camp – Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy for the PGA Tour and Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau for LIV Golf. The match will take place in December in Las Vegas and although not confirmed to be part of TNT’s “The Match” series, it makes all the sense in the world that it would receive the same branding.
Via GolfWeek :
Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will face Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in a made-for-TV match later this year, Golfweek has learned.
The contest pits the two biggest stars on the PGA Tour against the most high-profile figures on LIV Golf, and will be widely interpreted as indicating a potential thaw in relations between the once warring camps.
The event will be held mid-December in Las Vegas and will air on TNT, which is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery. TNT previously broadcast nine editions of The Match, the series of exhibitions that launched in 2018 with Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson. McIlroy, Koepka and DeChambeau have all appeared in versions of The Match, but it’s unclear if this latest battle will be a continuation of that series. Four previous Matches were held in Las Vegas, three at Wynn Golf Club and one at Shadow Creek.
With professional golf the way it is at the moment, this is probably the biggest matchup that can be secured. We’ve only seen PGA Tour and LIV golfers feature together in majors since the split last year and Koepka and DeChambeau are the only two LIV golfers to win those tournaments since leaving the PGA side. Scheffler is undoubtedly the best golfer in the world, dominating the 2024 season by winning eight tournaments including the Masters, Olympics, Players Championship, and Tour Championship. And although McIlroy has famously struggled in majors over the last decade, he remains arguably golf’s biggest star outside Tiger Woods.
While this match opens up a slew of questions, one of them is whether it’s yet another signal that golf is slowly coming back together. The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabian PIF have been in negotiations for months seeking a reunification.
And the hard feelings that seemed to exist in the immediacy of the divorce certainly seem to have cooled on both sides . In the GolfWeek piece, McIlroy said that the match was an opportunity to “energize the fans” in a “goodwill event that brings the best together again.” It’s fair to wonder whether this match would have even been possible a year ago given how raw the situation was back then.
While Scheffler and McIlroy vs Koepka and DeChambeau may have had a bit more juice a year ago when the PGA Tour vs LIV Golf rivalry was more intense, it will still be a unique opportunity to see these four greats of the game playing together. One that hopefully we will see much more often again very soon.
[ GolfWeek ]
The post Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler facing Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau in first PGA Tour-LIV showdown appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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