What: The Match: Champions for Charity
When: Sunday, May 24 | 3:00 p.m.
TV: TNT & TBS

The Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend is one of the best. Typically filled with cookouts, sports, beach, simply being outside, and drinking morning, noon and night because everyone’s off the next day. Hard to beat it. This one will be a little different though. Here in Boston, it’s supposed to be mostly sunny, high in the low to mid 60’s – an ideal day for outside activities. That’s why I suggest you do your walk, go for your run, take care of your garden, etc. as soon as possible because at 3pm, there is only one place you should be – on your couch, with a cold drink in hand, watching golf. “The Match: Champions for Charity,” a golf event from Medalist Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Florida between the pairs of Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning versus Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady playing for charity will be must-watch for any golf fan.

According to a press release,

Associated with the live telecast, WarnerMedia and the golfers will collectively make a charitable donation of $10 million to benefit COVID-19 relief. As part of the fundraising efforts, the competition will also include a partnership with the ALL IN Challenge, along with additional on-course competitive challenges for charity.

The match includes nine holes of fourball (aka best ball), followed by nine more holes of alternate shot play. I’ve read that all four players will wear mics and in addition to being able to obviously communicate with each other, be able to talk with the event’s broadcasters. This will make it especially fun and interesting for the viewers.

If you watched the Tiger v. Phil event back in 2018, it will be similar to that, hopefully with a lot more trash talk and side bets (for charity). The QBs are no slouches themselves. I think I saw that Tom and Peyton are 8 and 6 handicaps respectively, so it will still be very competitive.

The only struggle I’m having about all of this is who to root for. I’m a fan of both Tiger and Lefty, but would typically root for Tiger on any given Sunday. Didn’t like Peyton when playing against him, but have no real problem with him, especially now that he doesn’t play anymore. And while I will always love TB, I’m still a little sour about the whole thing. Sure he had every right to leave, and I know I’m being selfish, but would have really liked him to start and finish his career playing for one organization. It’d have been easiest if Tom was playing with Tiger and then I could root for them. But Tiger being with Peyton makes it difficult. As of today, I still don’t know who I’ll be rooting for…

And if you’re not a golf fan, or at least don’t like to watch golf, one way to make it fun is to have your own side bets going. I watched the first Match with friends and we were making bets during the entire round. I got down early so had to stop, but one friend came out of it up $160 I think. So if you can’t be making bets with people that you live with, get on a Zoom and watch with others and do real-time bets (closest to the hole, longest drive, whatever). Hell if you can’t do bets, I’m sure there’s a drinking game out there that you can associate the event with, it’s the Sunday of MDW after-all.