Can We Stop Forcing These Made-for-TV Matches?

This week, golf as an entertainment product will hit one of its lowest points.

It takes an unimaginably bad idea to get into this category when you consider that the PGA Tour and LIV have evolved into something of a black hole over the past couple years.

What I’m referencing is yet another made-for-TV match that is among the more pathetic attempts at attracting eyeballs: record producer DJ Khaled playing late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon in a four-hole match.

The match is being dubbed “The Cardigan Classic” and, regrettably, will be aired on NBC this Friday, Sept. 13, at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time. It is being presented by a car brand which I refuse to name. Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course, host of the American Century Championship, is the battleground.

The Friday the 13th match should satisfy horror enthusiasts as two 20-handicap golfers hack it around Lake Tahoe. Fallon jokingly called it “possibly the most intense athletic competition to ever air on television”—and Khaled might actually feel that way based on a misunderstanding in a recent made-for-TV match he didn’t play.

I’m sure some of you saw this news and quickly rolled your eyes before rightfully moving on to literally any other activity but I have fallen into a hysteria over this match existing. My only medication is writing about it.

We should have seen this coming

Golf has taken on a recent obsession with made-for-TV matches that are becoming progressively more contrived.

It’s unfortunate because there was once a golden era for this style of made-for-TV exhibition golf. It was called “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf” where legendary, interesting players faced off on notable courses as Hall of Fame players and broadcasters commentated.

It was a brilliant idea that was brilliantly executed. The matches were insightful, featuring information about host countries/regions and informal conversations between players. The gallery felt one with the outing, participating in the match just as much as they watched. I highly recommend going back and checking out some of the matches, like this 1963 Pebble Beach duel between Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead.

Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf ran from 1961 through 2003, ultimately giving way to a new generation of made-for-TV golf matches. In the ’90s and ’00s, the Skins Games, PGA Grand Slam of Golf and “Monday Night Golf” were among the matches to gain popularity. The “Showdown at Sherwood” (1999) between Tiger Woods and David Duval drew a 6.9 Nielsen TV rating—higher than every other golf broadcast of the year aside from the final round of the Masters. A year later, the “Battle at Bighorn” between Woods and Sergio Garcia drew a 7.6 rating. Woah! Those are massive numbers.

As the landscape of TV and professional golf changed in the late ’00s and early ’10s, the appetite for these matches waned. Reasons included more tournaments being added to the PGA Tour, Woods’ declining marketability/health and the fact that streaming services changed how people rally around an event like a made-for-TV golf match.

Some of that enthusiasm was revived in 2018 under the premise of a Turner Sports pay-per-view $9-million “winner-take-all” match between Woods and Phil Mickelson in Las Vegas. Played the day after Thanksgiving, there was considerable hype for the match, especially as legalized sports betting was gaining momentum and Woods was finally healthy, having just won the Tour Championship.

It turned into a bit of a disaster for Turner when a technical malfunction forced mass refunds and a free stream of the match, which was said to be watched by 750,000 unique viewers.

However, TNT’s second attempt at “The Match” was a gold mine. With virtually every sport in a shutdown early during the COVID pandemic, 5.6 million watched Woods pair with Peyton Manning to play Mickelson and Tom Brady. More than $20 million was raised for pandemic relief efforts.

There have been another seven iterations of “The Match” since then, although none of them has challenged the popularity of the 2020 event. The best ratings we’ve seen were in July 2021 when Bryson DeChambeau and Aaron Rodgers took on Mickelson and Brady as 1.72 million watched that match. (There are people who, for some reason I can’t fully grasp, enjoy watching celebrities play bad golf. More than 900,000 watched the American Century Championship this past summer.)

The past two years have seen a precipitous fall in ratings for “The Match” as the latest edition this past February only had 511,000 viewers. To be fair, that still exceeds early-round Tour coverage and every LIV broadcast ever—but it’s also less than many WNBA games (even the non-Caitlin Clark division).

As ratings for traditional professional golf continue to slide and “The Match” concept has stalled, of course we should expect future made-for-TV golf concepts to become more absurd in a race to attract attention.

Enter DJ Khaled and Jimmy Fallon.

We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I’m not sure why anyone finds this interesting.

At best, it’s a harmless attempt at getting people to watch golf. At worst, it’s a slap in the face that NBC is spending resources on this when its traditional golf coverage is getting lapped by CBS.

This made-for-TV golf division could also be getting more crowded in the future as TGL is slated to start in January. I fear we are on the precipice of the space getting saturated and most of the ideas are just not going to be that compelling.

There is another made-for-TV attempt upcoming

Looking to capitalize on Tour versus LIV drama, “The Match” is turning to Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka to face each other later this year.

I predict this match will draw tepid interest for three reasons:

• The Tour-LIV scuffle has died down significantly. It’s more like an apathetic holding pattern at this juncture. These players don’t genuinely dislike each other.

• It’s a thinly veiled, inorganic move to draw ratings. Unlike during the pandemic, there is no hook for why the match should be played at this specific moment. Two years ago, it would have slapped.

• While DeChambeau will draw attention, the other three (mainly Scheffler and Koepka) are not particularly popular nor entertaining for this format.

I imagine the ratings will be reasonable but still well beneath what we see for a typical final-round Tour broadcast.

I’m officially exhausted of these matches

While “The Match” will be something to watch during the silly season, I am officially worn out of producers pushing such contrived made-for-TV golf matches into the ecosystem.

A part of the reason why YouTube golf has become successful is that much of it grew organically. No Laying Up, Bob Does Sports, Good Good—these channels and brands started as entertainment products without money tied to them. Their initial instinct was to create a great product worth watching.

In a lot of cases, YouTube golf is about a group of friends playing together in an entertaining way. It’s relatable. People form relationships with the characters. While I’m worried that events like the Creator Classic become too commercialized over time—potentially draining some of that natural charm—I’m optimistic that fans will stay genuinely invested in the people playing.

This latest era of made-for-TV matches is trying to reverse-engineer that formula. It comes off as something that is overly manufactured in hopes that the product is naturally entertaining.

“Hey, Scottie Scheffler, go out and be funny on live TV. And hit great golf shots while you do it!”

But Scheffler and most professional golfers aren’t that interesting as people. Their entertainment value is almost exclusively in their physical talents. We already get to see that almost every week of the year.

I know the world doesn’t work this way—TV executives are there to squeeze every last dollar out of every last product—but I wish networks would put these resources into improving their traditional golf product.

Every golf fan wants that. I don’t know anyone who wants to see DJ Khaled and Jimmy Fallon.

I’m not saying there should be zero made-for-TV matches—there is a time and a place—but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. It feels like we’ve reached a point where networks are forcing these matches when the demand is just not there.

You know where there is demand? Making Tour telecasts more watchable.

Am I wrong here? Let me know below in the comments.

Top Photo Caption: Jimmy Fallon is facing DJ Khaled in a four-hole, televised golf match. (GETTY IMAGES/Isaiah Vazquez)