Are "Super Pairings" A Good Thing?

It's fun to see Tiger, Rory and Jordan paired together ... but is it good for golf?

The PGA Championship, one of four major tournaments in golf, kicks off today at Southern Hills, Oklahoma. As with all golf tournaments, the pairings for the first two days are selected, and then after the cut, pairings are dictated by where golfers are in the standings.

Every week, the PGA Tour has these “featured groups” which seem to put the best golfers on display - though in some weeks, the strength of field is so low it gets pretty silly. That said, this is something the tour has decided helps the brand and gets folks to tune in or perhaps even go to the tournament in person. After all, if you are following a pairing, it’s better if there are two or three golfers you like, rather than one paired with two random guys.

Or … is it?

Let’s take the sexiest pairing, one the PGA is leaning into hard:

PGA Championship @PGAChampionship

Tiger. Rory. Jordan. 22 Reasons to Call Out of Work. #PGAChamp | @ROLEX

My first reaction to this was that it is amazing! Jordan, Tiger and Rory! These are guys who only need their first name to be recognized. And, I genuinely like all three of these guys, and they are probably the three biggest “names” in golf (especially when Phil Mickelson is not participating.)

There are a few other “super pairings” as well - Hideki Matsuyama is paired up with Xander Schauffele and Tony Finau. The next group out is Tyrrell Hatton, Bryson DeChambeau and Max Homa. The NEXT group out is Viktor Hovland, Will Zalatoris and Cam Smith.

After that is the Jordan, Tiger and Rory pairing, followed by Patrick Reed, Justin Rose and Bubba Watson. That’s a LOT of big names all back to back - which seems pretty cool until you start looking at other tee times that have names most golf fans, even avid ones, might not recognize.

After a few of those ‘no name’ pairings, we see another run of stars:

Shane Lowry, Brooks Koepka and Adam Scott

Dustin Johnson, Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas

Jason Day, Rickie Fowler and … Harold Varner III

Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa

Let’s think about this - it’s great for TV, because again one set of cameras can follow three big names (or two big names and HVIII). But think about the folks who paid money to see this in person - the logjams following these groups will be severe. It’s not that fair to the golfers themselves, who will have rowdy crowds who probably won’t stand still through shots and need to be moved back when golfers are out of position, etc. It’s going to make play SO slow and again, not be that fair to these guys.

And then, there’s the guys like Talor Gooch, who is ranked 35th in the world (OWGR) and 10th in the FedEx Cup Standings. He’s a very, very good golfer even if he doesn’t have a brand name. He’s paired with guys named Brandon Bingaman and Ryosuke Kinoshita. (Bingaman is a PGA Professional, one of the cool things about this tournament, but the point is still the point.)

This is Talor Gooch, whose last name is also slang for ‘taint.’ And I don’t know what he’s doing here.

These super-pairings are also - often, but not always - at preferential times. Usually, a pairing that goes out early on Thursday goes out late on Friday which is much less desirable than the reverse. Folks like @useGOLFFacts (again, a Twitter account largely assumed to be run by Patrick Reed’s wife Justine) complain a lot about this, and frankly, they sort of have a point.

Pairings are clearly not random. Not even a little. And honestly, that’s not fair. (And BOY, do I not like agreeing about anything with Justine Reed.)

What’s more - there’s an opportunity here - why not make the pairings, at least for a major - an event? If the NFL Draft can attract viewers, why wouldn’t avid golf fans tune into The Golf Channel and literally draw names from a hat to create the pairings? There are some exceptions/traditions they could very clearly, and transparently do (having last year’s winner play with the winner of the U.S. Amateur in the U.S. Open, for example) … but aside from that, it would be great theater. I certainly think I’d like to see it, and it would definitely create less feelings of unfair treatment, etc. The “pairings party” is a hallmark of the pro-am’s most weeks, and it’s a lot of fun for those involved (so I’m told) - why not expand on this?

And … if Tiger DID get paired with Jordan and Rory this way, how fun would that be?

File this under “Things The PGA Tour Will Never Do” - and yes, I understand that majors are not really under the PGA Tour’s purview, but this is just a wholesale recommendation.