The closest thing you’ll see to the Kansas City Chiefs facing the Golden State Warriors ended as an early knockout in favor of the football team. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce surprised Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson with a 3&2 win in the eighth iteration of The Match on Thursday, taking the victory in a battle of multi-time champions.
Curry and Thompson entered the day as the heavy favorite by virtue of Curry’s well-known status as a scratch golfer, boasting a +1.3 handicap. In a 12-hole scramble competition, it was assumed he could carry the significantly less-experienced Thompson. Instead, Mahomes, reportedly a 7.7 handicap, turned out to have the hot hand at the beginning. The Chiefs drew first blood after a masterful chip by the quarterback to set up a birdie:
That was only the beginning. The Chiefs proceeded to take the next three holes, building a 4-up lead going into the sixth hole and threatening to win by the eighth hole. The Warriors struggled heavily on the green. The Warriors managed to regain their footing after that, but expectations were low enough that Draymond Green, who was there and very visible as his teammates’ cheerleader, treated it like a buzzer-beater.
The Chiefs finished off the win two holes later, notching a birdie on No. 10 just when Curry seemed to be waking up. The bigger loss for the Warriors might have been Green attempting to chug a beer. So that was The Match. The whole thing was the usual mishmash of forced banter, aggressive advertising and Charles Barkley trash talk.
It was the second time the event, which started as a one-on-one matchup between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, featured no professional golfers whatsoever, as Mahomes lost the sixth iteration to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers alongside Josh Allen last year. The list of champions at this point is a very confusing trivia question: Mickelson; Woods and Peyton Manning; Mickelson and Charles Barkley; Bryson DeChambeau and Aaron Rodgers; Brooks Koepka; Brady and Rodgers; Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas; and Mahomes and Travis Kelce.
We can only wait and see how it looks next time.
