By:
Alan Bastable
December 10, 2022
Tiger Woods at The Match on Saturday.
getty pictures
Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are off to a tough begin within the seventh version of The Match. After tying Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas on the first gap, Woods and McIlroy dropped three consecutive holes to fall 3-down by 4. The end result was wanting so grim within the 12-hole best-ball match, that commentator Charles Barkley joked that TNT was going to battle to meet all of its business obligations.
If there’s an upside to blowouts in made-for-TV matches, although, it’s that they assist gasoline the smack speak, which was by no means extra evident than on the sixth gap as Woods sized up a putt from simply off the inexperienced. With Thomas already tight — he had simply 5 toes left for birdie — Woods and McIlroy appeared poised to lose yet one more gap.
Enter Match announcer Brian Anderson, who couldn’t resist another twist of the knife.
“Tiger’s getting a stroke right here, guys,” Anderson quipped on the telecast, which all of the gamers can hear through AirPods of their ears.
Tiger Woods practically drives first inexperienced in The Match, makes straightforward birdie
The dig drew a begrudging smile from Woods and laughter from Thomas and Spieth.
“Don’t make him mad,” Spieth mentioned of Woods.
Certainly, if we’ve realized something about Woods over time, it’s that he doesn’t prefer to be jabbed. Ask Stephen Ames, who, within the run-up to his first-round match towards Woods on the 2006 Dell Applied sciences Match Play, mentioned, “Something can occur. Particularly the place he’s hitting it.”
Woods’ response? He famously thrashed Ames 9 and eight, successful each gap on the entrance 9 earlier than tying the tenth to shut him out. Message delivered.
If Anderson’s barb motivated Tiger, it hasn’t resulted in the identical lights-out play Woods exhibited towards Ames. Woods lipped out his birdie attempt from off the inexperienced at 6, the place he and McIlroy escaped with a tie. They bounced again to win the seventh with a birdie however then misplaced the eighth gap to drop again to 3-down.
Alan Bastable
Golf.com Editor
As GOLF.com’s government editor, Bastable is answerable for the editorial route and voice of one of many sport’s most revered and extremely trafficked information and repair websites. He wears many hats — modifying, writing, ideating, creating, daydreaming of someday breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely proficient and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Earlier than grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the options editor at GOLF Journal. A graduate of the College of Richmond and the Columbia Faculty of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey along with his spouse and foursome of youngsters.