GACHERU: Lessons for local golfers from Woods, Phil match

It took 22 holes of golf and five hours foor Phil Mickelson to beat Tiger Woods and take home $9m (Sh927m) in an afternoon match at the Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas.

The match, which had been hyped for many months, was either a hit or miss depending on who you were listening to. An article in Golfworld said that the match managed to “both entertain and disappoint”, while Daniel Rapaport — who writes for Sports Illustrated — said the match was glitzy but remained just a golf match. “They put lipstick on a pig. It remained a pig”.

According to Kyle Robbins, writing for SBNation, the experiment, as he refers to it, “was a failure but it cannot be dismissed out of hand.”

Robbins went on to credit the match for generating a wave of interest in the game of golf and that it attracted first time viewers. On the downside, Robbins said the golf was poor; “we didn’t get vintage Tiger or vintage Phil.”

Golfworld went on to say that we should expect a re-match and perhaps another match play with several options for variation. But love it or hate it, the match created many firsts. It was the first time a golf event was only available on pay-per-view, it was sports betting at another level, the golfers and their caddies wore microphones, capturing their every word. Golf fans who were not lucky to get a VIP invite to Shadow Creek, the event wasn’t open to the public, had to part with $20 (Sh2040 ) to watch the match. But as it turned out, the stream was made available free of charge after the purchase function broke down, leaving the TV networks that had paid a lot of money to broadcast the match with egg on their face.

According to the Turner News Network, nearly a million unique viewers logged in to watch the march and 55 million minutes of the match were consumed through the live stream. Turner lost an estimated $10 million (Sh1.02 billion) due to technical issues with payments associated with the live stream. Commenting about the match, Tiger Woods said, “We need to play better. I wish we both would have played better, but neither one of us putted well that day and there was some tough hole locations out there,” he said.

“There are areas we can make it better for the viewers.”

Given the learning from that match, perhaps its time a local Kenyan betting company put up some cash and bets to have Dismas Indiza square it off against Greg Snow; 18-holes and Sh1 million on the line.

How exciting would that be watching the long hitting Indiza try to muscle out Snow from a big pay day; and Snow trying his best to remain calm and claim the cash!

I bet that many local golfers would be willing to put up many side bets on an Indiza vs Snow match. Although something also tells me that an Indiza vs Richard Ainley match in Nakuru would actually get more attention. Hate it or love it, the one thing we learnt from the match was that golf fans will pay $19.99 (Sh2,040) to watch two of the greatest golfers of our time play against each other for a ridiculously high amount of cash.

An idea whose time has come? The jury is still out.