The broadcast opened with TNT’s Brian Anderson discussing the division in golf. The hype montage had Bryson DeChambeau saying, “It’s always been an us versus them mentality.” The promotional material called it a “grudge match.” This was intended to be PGA Tour versus LIV.

That is indeed a great sell for an offseason prime-time golf event, and that tension is what had many in the golf world so intrigued to watch Tuesday’s “Showdown” of Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka.

The problem is these four golfers seem to like each other. And they’re all in business together, joining forces to produce a major television event in Las Vegas. There was no hostility, no tension resulting from a two-year golf civil war.

There didn’t need to be, and it would have been strange to manufacture it. It just leaves an event like the Showdown in a tricky middle ground when so much of the marketing is about that battle when it’s really just four golfers playing a cool match on a great course.

Maybe that’s OK, though. Scheffler and McIlroy unsurprisingly beat DeChambeau and Koepka as the LIV team struggled. It made for a solid night of television — it just also leaves us with a discussion about what we want these matches to be.

Did this work?

It depends on your sense of scale. When this was announced, it felt substantial, like a must-watch event. This was not that. No matter how much we try — and I commend the trying — it’s too easy nowadays to feel aware of the lack of stakes. We, as an audience, are smart enough to know these players don’t really care if they lose. We know there’s almost nothing but cryptocurrency on the line.

That’s why TNT’s usual iterations of exhibition match-play events are focused on the “fun” element with some combination of celebrities, aging greats and young stars messing with each other in a goofy format. Those were fine, but the returns in intrigue and viewership are diminishing. This Showdown seemed to market itself toward being about more serious golf and competition. I welcome that. It just has to be earned.

But if your scale is to judge this as something to watch on a Tuesday night in December? Oh my goodness. Sign me up every week. It’s four of the best players — and biggest stars — playing a top-50 course in the country in Shadow Creek. I want to watch Scheffler hit majestic golf shots and DeChambeau playing courses differently from normal human beings. You get to see and hear elite golf minds on live mics, debating shots or reading putts. You get Koepka disgusted with himself and DeChambeau sarcastically celebrating finally winning a hole with, “Welcome to the tournament. Jeez.”

The new format seems like a potential success. Instead of simply playing an 18-hole match or one format, it combined all three phases of Ryder Cup golf that we love — foursomes, alternate shot and singles — into a three-legged hybrid with six-hole sprints of each style.

It allows an event to keep moving. McIlroy and Scheffler go up three holes through four? Great, they win that first point and we skip the fifth and sixth holes since there’s no need to play holes just to play them. It makes each hole feel a little more valuable since there are only six holes to take in each sprint. My only critique is having both singles matches on the same hole. I understand the reason — production, cameras, keeping all the stars together — but it made it more difficult to track.

The problem that all versions of these events need to figure out, though, is what they want to be. Do they want to be about stars having fun? Great! Everybody digging at DeChambeau’s absurd parka or the broadcast catching McIlroy selling the merits of creatine to Scheffler were genuinely funny. Or do they want to create compelling golf exhibitions? I’d probably prefer that. The challenge is events like this get stuck living in some awkward middle ground. Four players playing in a group means a whole bunch of lag time of walking and preparing for shots. The way to make that bearable is to create banter and constant entertainment between shots, but you can’t quite commit to that if the focus is the golf. They tried, but it never felt natural. And the hardest part is you never know when those natural, organic conversations will take place, so the production team never knows when to turn on their mics or let the panel talk. You can’t just isolate their audio and hope for gold, either. Doing this live is hard.

YouTube golf, where DeChambeau is the biggest star, has solved that by editing matches, but live, sellable programming is just so valuable right now, and anybody watching Tuesday could get tell gambling was a huge part of the product, for better or worse.

Do we want more of these?

Broadcasters are clamoring for more. TGL is launching as an indoor simulator league on weekday nights, starting in January. The Skins Game will be back in 2025. The shareholders must be happy with the returns, so this won’t be the last.

I’d like all parties involved to pursue more matches with this three-leg match-play format. It’s stimulating, and it rewards being good at different types of golf. I just don’t want them to be meaningless exhibitions for nothing other than the appeal of “the two tours are playing!” That leads us to the next question.

Is a long-term PGA Tour vs. LIV series a good idea?

DeChambeau and Koepka made it clear before Tuesday that they hope for more LIV versus PGA Tour events.

Do we want a full-on “Ryder Cup”-style match? Absolutely not. The Ryder Cup works because it feels rare and novel. The more we dilute that with other events mimicking it, the less special the Ryder Cup feels.

But I wonder if there’s potential for a longer-term series where LIV teams face off against PGA Tour teams and compete for something spread out across the season on Tuesday nights. The two tours have been deep in discussions for over a year, and the main thing left in that potential deal appears to be getting past government regulators. Until proven otherwise, most reads on the situation indicate both tours will still exist on their own but in better harmony.

Maybe this would be part of a happy marriage. It would provide stakes to these events. It could be the best possible version of the “Champions League“-style crossover tour McIlroy and others have campaigned for. And it would help amplify the “Who is better?” conversations both sides love to push.

The main problem, and it’s not the only one, is that a new league is already trying to capitalize on midweek prime-time team golf: TGL.

Funniest moment of the night

I laughed the hardest at Scheffler’s technical difficulties and the ways they tried to handle them. We learned Scheffler prefers corded headphones, so he struggled with the AirPods. Early in the match, they went to Scheffler for an interview that he couldn’t hear. He turned to what appeared to be a producer and joked, “You guys could just ask me.”

A few minutes later, Scheffler jumped when a worker rushed up behind him and tried to fix his mic. He was very polite to the employee, but then he walked to McIlroy and said, “He just reached in my butt! Got felt up by the first hole.”

But the biggest meme of the night was certainly DeChambeau inexplicably rocking a gargantuan Crushers jacket. It was 67 degrees at the time.

Incredible look from Bryson. pic.twitter.com/yzL1pukEIw

— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS) December 17, 2024

In his defense, he got the last laugh as the sun went down and the other players were freezing.

Well, we still got the last laugh. On the 15th hole, we learned the propane heater burned a hole in DeChambeau’s jacket.

(Top photo of Rory McIlroy: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)