Capital One’s: The Match is an all-NFL quarterback battle live in Las Vegas.
The next version of the made-for-TV Capital One’s: The Match series is upon us, as NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers will take on Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes on Wednesday, June 1, at the Wynn in Las Vegas.
Brady and Rodgers have both played in a Match before, while Allen and Mahomes will both be making their debuts.
The telecast team is loaded, with TNT’s Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley on the call with Arizona Cardinals star J.J. Watt, Amanda Renner and Trevor Immelman rounding out the TV team.
The Match VI will be 12 holes with several competitions weaved in, including a few closest to the hole challenges.
Earlier this week, Allen had a practice round with fellow Bills QBs Case Keenum and Matt Barkley as well as tight end Tommy Sweeney. The team shared a video on social media. Another foursome included Von Miller and Gabriel Davis.
How to watch
Hot Seat Press Conference 2.0 presented by Capital One: 5:45 p.m. ET on the B/R app, hosted by J.J. Watt.
Capitals One’s: The Match: 6:30 p.m.ET on TNT, with simulcasts on truTV and HLN.
The QB Conversation: Approximately 10 p.m. ET (or once live golf coverage concludes), will simulcast on TNT, truTV and HLN.
Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady fist bump on the second tee during Capital One’s The Match at The Reserve at Moonlight Basin on July 06, 2021, in Big Sky, Montana. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images for The Match)
For all the build-up, all the speculation, the man who had missed two cuts in a row on the PGA Tour put on a clinic.
Koepka took down DeChambeau, 4 and 3.
You could argue the best part of the telecast was actually the guys in the booth, as the conversations between Charles Barkley and Phil Mickelson were fantastic.
Throughout the short match, there were a few chirps that stood out among the rest — starting with the Lefty’s opinion about what happened to the Europeans at Whistling Straits a few months ago.
Bryson brought out some Koep-cakes on the first tee but Brooks had the last laugh.
After months and months of build up, the feud between Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau finally has a winner.
Koepka made quick, easy work of DeChambeau on Friday at the Wynn Golf Club on the Las Vegas strip, winning the 12-hole match on Friday in dominant fashion. DeChambeau didn’t win a single hole while Koepka claimed Nos. 2, 5, 6 and 8 to cruise to the 4-and-3 win.
DeChambeau started things off by handing out cupcakes to the crowd and offering one to Koepka.
The fifth edition of The Match is underway with Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau teeing off at the Wynn Golf Club in Vegas.
But before the pair of rivals reached the first tee box, DeChambeau started things off by handing out cupcakes to the crowd and offered one to Koepka. Was it to talk trash? Sort of.
But I can’t figure out the message — is it that he’s Brooks “Cupcake” if you mispronounce his name? (See below.) Is he calling Koepka a cupcake?
Here’s the funny thing: What was on the cupcakes? It was Koepka’s annoyed face that became a meme after he rolled his eyes at DeChambeau months ago.
Live updates from The Match between Brooks and Bryson.
It all comes down to this.
For more than a year Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau have been at odds. On Friday, the pair of U.S. Open champions will put their beef on the line during the fifth playing of The Match, this time at Wynn Golf Club just off the Las Vegas strip.
The 12-hole match will feature a series of closest-to-the-pin and long drive challenges. Coverage begins at 4 p.m. ET on TNT, with a simulcast on TBS, truTV and HLN. Brian Andersen will call the action alongside Phil Mickelson and Charles Barkley, with Amanda Balionis as the on-course reporter.
If you can’t tune in, check out hole-by-hole updates from The Match below.
Wynn has one of the highest costs of a daily-fee course in the United States.
Wynn Golf Club, right behind the Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino, fits perfectly into its brash surroundings on the Strip. It’s as Vegas as Vegas can be when it comes to golf course architecture.
Much of the course is brand new, despite golf having been played on the site since 1952 when it became the Desert Inn Golf Club.
Steve Wynn purchased the resort in 2000, and the Tom Fazio-designed Wynn Golf Club opened in 2005. But that layout was shuttered in 2017 as the operators of the adjacent Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino considered other uses for the ridiculously valuable land on which the course sits, and the resort lost millions of dollars in revenue from green fees and other golf-attributable casino earnings.
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After scrapping plans to build a lagoon on the site with new hotel rooms and restaurants, Fazio and his son, Logan, were called to breathe fresh life into the abandoned track. Wynn Golf Club reopened in October 2019 with eight new and 10 refurbished holes, playing to a par of 70 at 6,722 yards.
As far as playing Wynn Golf Club, you don’t have to know someone who knows someone. You just have to have some disposable income.
Tee times can be made by resort guests 90 days in advance, and general public play is open with 30-day advanced bookings. But be ready to fork over the cash: green fees are $550.
Wynn has one of the highest costs of a daily-fee course in the U.S. and while that sounds prohibitively expensive for many players, there are plenty of guests at the Wynn hotel and casino who spin through a lot more on the slot machines in less time than it takes to play a round of golf.
Brian Hawthorne, the resort’s executive director of golf operations, said there’s a lot of value baked into that fee when considering the location on the Strip as well as an all-inclusive experience that includes forecaddie and rental clubs if needed.
“And if you keep somebody from gambling for four and a half hours, we might be saving people money,” he said with a laugh.
So while that kind of green fee is not for every golfer, Hawthorne is right. As he said, “There’s different price points for every type of customer,” and many of the luxury resort’s guests simply aren’t worried about price. This is, after all, a Forbes Five-Star property that uses Rolls-Royce limos to whisk preferred guests back and forth to the airport.
Never let it be said that a good rivalry isn’t good for television ratings.
Never let it be said that a good rivalry isn’t good for television ratings.
At least that’s the basic premise behind the fifth edition of Capital One’s The Match this week. For much of the last year, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau and their fans have taken potshots at each other, and the back and forth became so silly at one point that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan actually said fans could get kicked out of Tour events for adding to the vitriol by saying the wrong thing to the wrong player.
Remember, previously The Match was Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson, a pretty good rivalry, and then there were amateur partners Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, also long-time rivals. Rivalry stokes the event.
The bad feelings melted away between Koepka and DeChambeau, we are told, during the Ryder Cup, when the golfers actually offered to play together for the good of the team. Then came the news that the two talented and major championship-winning golfers would be the featured attraction in The Match the Friday after Thanksgiving. It will be televised by TNT and TBS at 1 p.m. PT.
In a sense, The Match is just an extension of what golf has always tried to provide — some made-for-television competition between two (or four) players on golf courses that many people will never play or perhaps have never seen. No one will confuse The Match for Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf, but at least the idea and spirit are similar.
Team USA player Bryson DeChambeau looks over his yardage book on the sixth green during day three singles rounds for the 43rd Ryder Cup.
How much different will The Match V be than the previous matches that relied heavily on Mickelson as a competitor? And what will be the same?
The beef is back on and the two will square off in the fifth version of The Match this Friday, Nov. 26 in a 12-hole duel at the Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas.
Previous matches have featured Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Charles Barkley and Steph Curry. That got us thinking … who should be next?
A new ad is set to debut with video of the two playing over the Queen hit, “You’re my best friend.”
How bad do you want that PIP money?
Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka continue to prove they’ll do whatever it takes to get a sizable chunk of the Player Impact Program first reported on by Golfweek, an initiative set to dispense $40 million in bonuses to 10 stars deemed to have most moved the needle in terms of fan engagement.
The two will meet in the latest edition of The Match the day after Thanksgiving. The event will take place at the Wynn Golf Club, which sits just a few big swings from the Las Vegas strip. The pair will face off in a 12-hole showdown with the usual cast of Turner characters — including Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley — handling the telecast. TNT’s presentation will be simulcast on TBS, truTV and HLN, as well. Live coverage will start at 4 p.m. ET.
A new ad is set to debut with video of the two playing over the Queen classic radio staple, “You’re my best friend.” And this is just the beginning.
In the ad, Koepka says matter-of-factly: “Give the people what they want.” DeChambeau later adds: “Friendsgiving is going to be just a little bit different this year.”
As for the course, Steve Wynn purchased the resort in 2000, and the Tom Fazio-designed Wynn Golf Club opened in 2005. But that layout was shuttered in 2017 as the operators of the adjacent Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino considered other uses for the ridiculously valuable land on which the course sits, and the resort lost millions of dollars in revenue from green fees and other golf-attributable casino earnings.
LAS VEGAS – Sin City is as subtle as a gold-sequin sport coat. Along the Las Vegas Strip on any given night, water cannons blast skyward to omnipresent musical accompaniment. Crowds of tourists gawk at skimpily dressed street performers. Headliners’ …
LAS VEGAS – Sin City is as subtle as a gold-sequin sport coat.
Along the Las Vegas Strip on any given night, water cannons blast skyward to omnipresent musical accompaniment. Crowds of tourists gawk at skimpily dressed street performers. Headliners’ faces are splashed 50 stories high on casino hotels designed to separate mostly sane people from a chunk of their retirement funds.
Love it or leave it, it’s all right there in your face. If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, that’s because no other place in the U.S. – short of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, maybe? – could handle it. Or just as likely, would want to.
Plopped into this slice of the Mojave Desert, not 500 yards from the Strip, sits the most Vegas of golf holes: a 249-yard par 3 over a pond and creek to a green situated at the base of a roaring man-made waterfall. No. 18 (pictured atop this story) at the newly renovated Wynn Golf Club is a do-or-die kind of challenge, one roll of the dice to win all the money or finish with empty pockets.
If great golf holes fit seamlessly into their environment – think No. 18 at Pebble Beach or No. 12 at Augusta National– then consider adding this closing one-shotter to the list of must-sees. Like the rest of the Strip, there’s nothing natural about this oasis, meaning it fits perfectly into its brash surroundings. Make a great play on No. 18 and you might – might! – get lucky. Throw out a meek effort and forget about it. The hole is bold, loud, somewhat insane and possibly brilliant, depending on your success. At the least, it’s certainly memorable.
In other words, it’s as Vegas as Vegas can be when it comes to golf course architecture. The hole used to be a par 4 that played over water to the front of that waterfall, but a giant convention center now sits where the old tee box was located. The all-or-nothing par 3 better fits the Vegas vibe anyway.
No. 13 at Wynn Golf Club (Courtesy of Wynn Las Vegas/Brian Oar)
As with the enveloping and ever-changing skyline of the Strip, much of Wynn Golf Club is brand new, despite golf having been played on the site since 1952 when it became the Desert Inn Golf Club.
Steve Wynn purchased the resort in 2000, and the Tom Fazio-designed Wynn Golf Club opened in 2005. But that layout was shuttered in 2017 as the operators of the adjacent Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino considered other uses for the ridiculously valuable land on which the course sits, and the resort lost millions of dollars in revenue from green fees and other golf-attributable casino earnings.
After scrapping plans to build a lagoon on the site with new hotel rooms and restaurants, Fazio and his son, Logan, were called to breathe fresh life into the abandoned track. Wynn Golf Club reopened in October with eight new and 10 refurbished holes, playing to a par of 70 at 6,722 yards.
“I think the emotion for the Wynn Golf Club is, it is a very distinct, unique, one-of-a-kind place,” Tom Fazio said. The hotels and casinos and general Las Vegas buzz are ”part of the experience. So I think the Wynn Golf Club … is something that maybe can’t be reproduced.”
The layout ranked ninth in Golfweek’s Best list of casino courses in 2017 before its closure. The reopening date didn’t allow enough time for the renovated Wynn Golf Club to rejoin the Golfweek’s Best list for 2019, but expect to see it back near the top in years to come.
And while the relatively secluded Shadow Creek north of the Strip long has held the No. 1 spot on the Golfweek’s Best casino list despite allowing few tee times, Wynn Golf Club is taking a different approach. Tee times can be made by resort guests 90 days in advance, and general public play is open with 30-day advanced bookings.
No. 5 at Wynn Golf Club (Courtesy of Wynn Las Vegas/Brian Oar)
With a green fee of $550, Wynn Golf Club clearly is not for everyone. But for deep-pocketed fans of the luxury hotel and its high-stakes gaming rooms, the return of the course offers a fantastic diversion and a chance to tee it up without ever leaving the hustle and bustle of the Strip.
Not that all 18 holes are so over the top as the closer. The first 17 are, for the most part, merely beautiful and unlikely, a respite from canned casino air where high-rollers can see the sun and play the game on surprisingly rolling terrain.
The course sits on a relatively tight 129 acres, but through some sleight of hand that would make a Vegas magician proud, the holes never seem crowded. There are a few spots where a terribly wayward tee shot can find a neighboring fairway, but the streams and foliage – a very un-desert-like 100,000 shrubs and 7,000 trees – create a separation that feels somewhat natural even if it took a fleet of bulldozers to move all that earth.
“With the creation of the Wynn golf course, the idea was to incorporate not only the challenge from vegetation, but also relief and contour and framing and definition and also some excitement in the terrain,” Fazio said. “So we went from being a flat, narrow golf course (with the Desert Inn) to being a rolling, elevated, framed kind of a setting. So that was really the overall process, a totally different environment.”
Wynn Golf Club (Courtesy of Wynn Las Vegas/Brian Oar)
A shallow valley runs through the center of the property, allowing for several elevated tee shots to fairways that roll down before climbing back to the greens. The player can see it all from most tees – perfect for resort play where golfers aren’t familiar with the layout. There are few tricks, just solid challenges into multi-tiered putting surfaces.
The newly installed Dominator Bentgrass greens were fully grown-in and in excellent condition for the reopening, as was the rest of the turf of Tifway II Bermuda and seasonal rye overseed. It’s hard to believe such turf could exist at the end of summer in the middle of the desert, and superintendent Jason Morgan deserves a tip of the cap for the superior conditioning.
“There’s so much detail that went into that golf course in a short space of time, and Jason was the guy in the field making it happen,” Fazio said.
The course’s six par 3s stand out. It might be expected that so many short holes are in play, as land was surrendered to the construction of additional conference space at the resort. Despite the plethora of par 3s, though, this is no sideshow pitch-and-putt. The best of the bunch might not even be the “wow”-inducing 18th but the 209-yard 12th, which drops downhill to a green guarded front and left by a creek.
“If you had to rank them best to least, it would be hard to do that because there is no least,” Fazio said of these par 3s. “We don’t deal in anything that’s least.”
No. 16 at Wynn Golf Club (Courtesy of Wynn Las Vegas/Brian Oar)
Best and least are opinions, of course, but the hole that might leave a few golf architecture fans scratching their heads is the 442-yard, par-4 14th.
The 14th green runs from high-right to low-left, and mature trees block the left half of the green. Tee shots must be placed well to the right near a bunker if the player is to have any shot at a far-left pin. If a player hits a tee shot down the center of the fairway, a dramatic hook would then be required to feed the ball across the green and reach any hole on the left. A player could try to roll an approach beneath the branches and across several mounds, but that would be the equivalent of splitting a pair of 5s at a blackjack table – just because you can doesn’t mean you should. A safer shot to the right can leave a 50-foot-plus putt.
Basically, it’s a very hard hole where the strategic demands begin on the tee shot. It’s a big ask for many resort players.
But, again, that’s Vegas. The odds are never stacked in the player’s favor. It’s best to just take a shot and enjoy a setting that you likely will never forget.
Now about that green fee . . .
Wynn Golf Club has one of the highest costs of a daily-fee course in the U.S., charging $550 in season, $50 higher even than before the course was shuttered in 2017. That sounds prohibitively expensive for many players, but there are plenty of guests in the adjacent Wynn hotel and casino who spin through a lot more on the slot machines in less time than it takes to play a round of golf.
Brian Hawthorne, the resort’s executive director of golf operations, said there’s a lot of value baked into that fee when considering the location on the Strip as well as an all-inclusive experience that includes forecaddie and rental clubs if needed.
“And if you keep somebody from gambling for four and a half hours, we might be saving people money,” he said with a laugh.
So while that kind of green fee is not for every golfer, Hawthorne is right. As he said, “There’s different price points for every type of customer,” and many of the luxury resort’s guests simply aren’t worried about price. This is, after all, a Forbes Five-Star property that uses Rolls-Royce limos to whisk preferred guests back and forth to the airport.
More options in Vegas
There’s a lot more to Las Vegas than the Strip, and while it might not be a classic golf town, there are plenty of interesting options to keep players out of the casinos. Here’s a sampling from a recent trip:
TPC Las Vegas (Courtesy of TPC Las Vegas)
TPC Las Vegas | Par 71; 7,104 yards
Built in 1996, this Bobby Weed and Raymond Floyd design is about a 25-minute drive west of the Strip near the base of the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
With plenty of elevation changes, several of the sculpted fairways curve out of sight but with enough room to make a few bad swings and keep playing the same ball. Overall, a fun romp through the desert on a solid design in excellent shape on a course (formerly named TPC at the Canyons) that hosted PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions events for more than a decade. TPC Las Vegas is No. 13 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play in Nevada.
The Wolf at Paiute (Courtesy of Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort)
The Wolf at Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort | Par 72; 7,604 yards
The Wolf is the newest (2001) of three Pete Dye tracks at this complex owned and operated by the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, and this 18 is generally considered the most difficult of the three.
Fairways and playing corridors offer plenty of width, which is welcome as the wind frequently kicks up across the exposed course about 40 minutes north of the Strip. The desert views and isolation are worth the drive, offering a completely different setting devoid of houses and towering hotels.
The conditions are immaculate, but pick the proper set of tees on what the resort calls the longest course in Nevada. The Wolf is No. 9 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play in Nevada, just ahead of its sister courses (Paiute’s Sun Mountain is No. 10, and the Snow Mountain Course is No. 11).
Bali Hai Golf Club (Courtesy of Bali Hai)
Bali Hai Golf Club | Par 71; 7,002 yards
Located on the south end of the Strip, this fun course is perfectly situated to serve the various groups that frequent its fairways. The halfway house is the property’s nerve center, serving drinks to bachelor parties and corporate golf days.
The Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley layout, which opened in 2000, is near McCarran International Airport and features a fair amount of elevation changes and some 4,000 trees that help create separation in the often forgivingplaying corridors.
With a green fee that can be less than a quarter of the price to play the newly reopened Wynn Golf Club, it’s a solid choice. Bali Hai is No. 47 on Golfweek’s Best list of casino courses.
