The Match (Golf), Explained: Every Rule, Format, and Result Since 2018

I’ve watched every edition of this thing, from the stilted silence of Tiger vs. Phil in 2018 to Brooks Koepka needling Bryson DeChambeau into conceding a putt in the Nevada dark three years later. The Match golf series isn’t a tournament in the way the Masters or the Ryder Cup is a tournament. Real golf, real money, real trash talk, dressed up for a TV audience that would rather watch four mic’d-up guys bicker than sit through four hours of a normal Tour event that’s the actual product here, not competitive golf in the usual sense.

Twelve editions in, there’s still no single fixed rulebook, just a loose format the producers reshape every time the ratings dip. That’s exactly why the format keeps changing every year or two. Below is what actually happened in each edition, how the scoring works, and where the whole franchise stands as of mid-2026.

What “The Match” Actually Means (There Are Three Different Answers)

Type “the match golf” into Google and you’ll find three completely different things mixed into the same results, and most articles never bother to separate them.

The Match (2018–present) is the TNT exhibition series this article covers Capital One-sponsored, TV-first, built around celebrity and pro-athlete pairings.

Match play is a scoring format used across professional and amateur golf the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup, plenty of club competitions where players win holes, not strokes. The Match golf franchise uses match play scoring, but match play itself existed for more than a century before Tiger and Phil ever showed up at Shadow Creek.

“The Match” is also the title of Mark Frost’s 2007 book about a completely unrelated 1956 exhibition at Cypress Point. Different match, different century, different four golfers and one of the more common mix-ups in search results for this exact topic.

How the Whole Thing Started

Two industry insiders dreamed this up, not a network executive. Talent agent Jack Whigham and producer Bryan Zuriff built the concept around a format Zuriff loved from his younger days: the old Skins Game, the unofficial Thanksgiving-week event that ran on the PGA Tour from 1983 to 2008. Whigham’s pitch was straightforward golf the way regular guys play it with their buddies, complete with side bets and a running dialogue of grief, not a sanitized Tour broadcast.

Getting Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to headline it wasn’t a hard sell. Mickelson co-owned the venture from day one, and the two biggest names in golf agreed to a genuinely winner-take-all format worth $9 million, no split and no consolation prize. Woods’ longtime agent framed it as something different from the earlier primetime golf specials built to showcase Woods on his own entertainment first, competition a distant second.

The debut nearly broke before it even started. Turner tried selling the event as pay-per-view through Bleacher Report Live, technical problems locked out customers who’d already paid, and the whole broadcast ended up streaming for free while refunds went out to everyone. Mickelson beat Woods anyway, needing four extra holes to close it out 22 holes in.

Every Edition of The Match: Results, Formats, and Venues

No other article puts the format, the venue, and the actual outcome for every edition in one table Wikipedia splits this across two separate tables and skips the format entirely.

Not officially branded as The Match Golf Channel’s own spin-off with the same core producers and one returning headliner pairing.

A few things jump out looking at all twelve side by side. The ratings peaked almost immediately: 5.8 million viewers for the 2020 Woods/Manning vs. Mickelson/Brady charity match, still the most-watched golf broadcast in cable TV history, and viewership slid almost every year after that. By 2023, it had dropped under 800,000. By the 2024 Superstars special, it was down to 150,000.

I’ll say the unpopular part directly: the entertainment concept ran out of gas around edition eight. The 2018 original worked because nobody had watched two genuine rivals wager millions of dollars against each other on live TV before. By the time TNT rolled out NFL quarterbacks playing a scramble in 2022, the novelty had already worn off, and no amount of open mics fixed that slide.

The Formats The Match Has Actually Used

“Match play” tells you almost nothing about what viewers actually see, because The Match has cycled through half a dozen different scoring formats:

Head-to-head match play is the simplest version two players, with stroke-play scoring converted into holes won and lost. Tiger vs. Phil in 2018 and Koepka vs. DeChambeau in 2021 both used this format, and both feel more like an actual duel than a team scramble.

Four-ball (better ball) has each player in a twosome play their own ball, and the better of the two scores counts for the team on that hole. The 2020 charity match played four-ball on the front nine before switching formats on the back.

Foursomes (alternate shot) has partners share a single ball and take turns hitting it. This format put Charles Barkley on a forward set of tees during the 2020 Champions for Change edition, since alternate shot needs some way to level a wildly uneven skill gap between a Hall of Famer and a Masters champion.

Greensomes has both players tee off, the team picks the better drive, and the pair alternates shots from there. The Match IV used this format in 2021, splitting the difference between four-ball and full foursomes.

Shamble again has both players tee off and the team picks the best drive, but then everyone plays their own ball in from that spot instead of alternating. Brady and Rodgers beat Mahomes and Allen using a shamble in 2022.

Skins borrows straight from the old PGA Tour Skins Game: every hole carries its own dollar value, the best individual score wins the skin outright, and ties roll the money over to the next hole. The Match IX ran skins among four players rather than two teams in 2024, and it came down to a chip-off after nobody separated on the 12th hole.

If the “up,” “and 2,” or “conceded” terminology throws you, our handicap system breakdown covers how the system allocates strokes between mismatched players which matters more in The Match than you’d expect, given how often these fields mix Tour pros with athletes who carry a real handicap in other sports.

The Side Bets and Skills Contests Are the Real Show

Nobody explains this part well, and it’s actually the most distinctive thing about the format. Every edition layers smaller prop bets on top of the main scoring: closest-to-the-pin money, long-drive bonuses, and side wagers the players negotiate live, on-air, mid-round.

Take the 2021 Koepka-DeChambeau match: Koepka clinched the whole thing outright on the ninth hole, but the pair kept playing two more holes anyway. DeChambeau still walked away with the longest-drive and nearest-the-pin bonus money for charity, proof the side-bet payouts run completely independent of who wins the overall match. Average PGA Tour driving distance sits well beyond what most amateurs carry our golf club distance chart breaks down realistic carry numbers by skill level, useful context for how lopsided some of these “long drive” side bets get between a Tour pro and, say, an NFL quarterback.

The mic’d-up gimmick amplifies all of this. Every player wears an open microphone that captures banter with their opponent and live back-and-forth with the broadcast booth; Justin Thomas getting the better of Charles Barkley in a memorable 2020 on-air exchange is still one of the format’s most-replayed moments. A chip-off or closest-to-the-pin decider has settled more than one tied match, which puts you closer to watching a skills-contest tiebreaker than tournament golf worth knowing before you take any of these on-air prop bets seriously, given the actual odds of pulling off a hole-in-one under real conditions.

Is The Match Still Happening in 2026?

Not under that name, not yet. The most recent branded edition, the Crypto.com Showdown between Rory McIlroy/Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau/Brooks Koepka, aired December 17, 2024, and by most accounts it undersold its own premise. Producers marketed it as a “grudge match” meant to bridge three years of PGA Tour/LIV Golf hostility. It drew only 625,000 viewers and lost most of the loose, trash-talking energy that made earlier editions watchable.

For December 2025, producers pivoted instead of running it back. McIlroy and Scheffler returned as team captains, but Golf Channel dropped The Match branding entirely, rebranded the event as the Golf Channel Games, and swapped head-to-head scoring for a timed skills competition distance and accuracy challenges rather than actual holes played. Golf Channel and USA Network aired it instead of TNT, reflecting Golf Channel’s 2025 spin-off into its own company under Versant.

Nobody has announced a 2026 edition under The Match name as of this writing. Given the franchise’s own pattern of announcing most years just weeks before the event airs, often timed around Thanksgiving, that gap isn’t unusual, and a new edition wouldn’t be a shock by November.

Where to Watch The Match

Every numbered edition through 2024 aired on TNT, with simulcasts spread across TBS, truTV, and HLN depending on the year; international audiences got it through Eurosport, GolfTV, and Discovery+. The 2025 Golf Channel Games broke that pattern entirely, airing on Golf Channel and USA Network instead. A new edition returning later in 2026 would most likely land back on Warner Bros. Discovery’s networks given the franchise’s ownership history, though after 2025’s rebrand, that’s genuinely an open question rather than a safe bet.

The Other “Match”: Hogan and Nelson vs. Venturi and Ward, 1956

If you landed here looking for the golfers in Mark Frost’s book instead of the TV series, you’re thinking of a completely different event. In January 1956, car dealer Eddie Lowery bet oil executive George Coleman that his two amateur employees could beat any two players Coleman could find. Coleman showed up with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. Lowery’s guys, U.S. Amateur champion Harvie Ward and future Masters runner-up Ken Venturi, very nearly won anyway at Cypress Point, in a match that’s become one of golf’s most retold private duels.

Hogan and Nelson eventually won it one-up, an outcome Frost’s book renders in more detail than any scorecard could. Golf history buffs should absolutely read it, but don’t confuse it with the made-for-TV series covered above, same name, same sport, seventy years apart.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I watch the match golf?

Historically on TNT, with simulcasts on TBS, truTV, and HLN in the US, plus Eurosport, GolfTV, or Discovery+ internationally. The 2025 Golf Channel Games spin-off aired on Golf Channel and USA Network instead, so check current listings rather than assuming TNT automatically carries the next edition.

Who were the four golfers in the book The Match?

Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson played as the professional team against amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi at Cypress Point in January 1956, the subject at the heart of Mark Frost’s book “The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever.”

Who were the players in the match?

It depends which edition. The original 2018 match paired Tiger Woods against Phil Mickelson; the most recent branded edition, the 2024 Crypto.com Showdown, paired Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. Check the results table above for every pairing since 2018.

Where did Tiger and Phil play the match?

Shadow Creek Golf Course in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 23, 2018. Mickelson won on the 22nd hole after four playoff holes, taking the full $9 million purse.

The Bottom Line

The Match golf series works best as a curiosity, not as golf anyone should take too seriously. Watch the 2018 original and the 2020 charity match for the novelty and the genuinely enormous stakes; skip most of the celebrity-heavy scramble editions unless you specifically want to watch Bill Murray hack it around a golf course on national TV.

A real twelfth “Match,” another Golf Channel Games, or something the producers haven’t named yet whatever comes next will likely follow the same loose formula: mic’d-up players, side bets on every hole, and a scoring format that changes again the moment ratings say the last one didn’t land. Our handicap explainer is a good next stop if you want to understand how match play scoring works when you’re the one keeping score.