Did you know that sharks don’t have bones? They consist of cartilaginous tissues, similar to the tips of our noses. Today’s Fun Fact Friday is about sharks because if you don’t get Shark content here, you won’t get it anywhere this weekend. More on that later.

You touched your nose, didn’t you?

News and updates

  • This Sunday brings Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity, featuring Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning. Check out our preview below.
  • The European Tour may restart its season with four straight events in the UK. This would help alleviate some travel concerns and limit the risk of spreading the virus. Full Story from John Huggan
  • LPGA Tour commissioner Mike Whan announced that LPGA and Symetra Tour status will roll over into 2021. The Symetra Tour may have a severely truncated season, with just 10 events on the schedule. Press Release
  • As they stand today, the fields for the first few PGA Tour events are loaded. The Charles Schwab Challenge has commitments from five of the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking, and the Travelers Championship field is stout as well. Brooks Koepka committed to the Travelers on Thursday, joining Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, and Patrick Cantlay.

The Storylines

Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity

Consecutive weekends of live golf. What a world!

For the second edition of The Match, Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning will face off against Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady as they raise money for COVID-19 relief. The match will take place on Sunday at Medalist Golf Club, Woods’s home course, and will be televised on TNT and TBS at 3 p.m. ET.

After the Tiger-Phil showdown at Shadow Creek in 2018 under-delivered from an entertainment perspective, a few changes have been made to spice up the broadcast. The mic’d-up foursome will play four-ball on the front nine and modified alternate shot on the back. Amanda Balionis and Justin Thomas will be on the course talking with players. On the 5th hole, each player will be limited to one club. Charles Barkley is going to play a hole! Hey, why not.

There’s one person you definitely won’t see at Medalist, though. Course co-designer and founding member Greg Norman has a… complicated history with the club. Although he was approached at some point about participating in the event, Norman was ultimately left off the broadcast team. Eamon Lynch has more on this story for Golfweek.

Mediocre as the Shadow Creek match was, we’re excited for the second go-around. The production team learned from 2018 and has made a lot of adjustments. The addition of alternate shot and a one-club challenge are particularly intriguing. Remember, it was during the one-club challenge at the Japan Skins that Jason Day hit this miraculous greenside bunker shot with his 6-iron. And on the alternate-shot holes, Manning and Brady are sure to put Tiger and Phil in some awkward spots, forcing the pros to reach into their bags of tricks. Also, Slugger White helped pick pin positions, so you know that the birdies will be as plentiful as the memes.

See you Sunday…

The Latest from The Fried Egg

Credit Hours: Vanderbilt University Women’s Golf – After the pandemic shortened her season, senior Abbey Carlson had to decide between her dream job at Boeing and another year at school.

The Fried Egg Podcast, Episode 181: Stephen Proctor on challenge matches

As an appetizer for the upcoming Tiger-Phil (plus Manning and Brady) match, Andy and Garrett speak with golf historian Stephen Proctor about the history of challenge matches. They discuss the importance of rowdy, big-money matches to early golf culture in Scotland, the eventual ascendancy of stroke play as the dominant competitive format, and the ways that today’s televised matches might recapture some of the magic of the past. Stephen is the author of Monarch of the Green, a biography of Young Tom Morris. Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Shotgun Start: Medalist preview ramblings and the Euro Tour’s new “Manor Swing”

This holiday weekend Friday episode rolls into the weekend with some pleasant news from Andy’s round in Minnesota this week, tales of conference calls gone awry, and the announcement that the Shotgun Start now really, actually has merch in the form of a few hats. Then they get to the news of the week, starting with a report that the European Tour has plans for a return, concentrated in the UK on what will now be known here as the Manor swing. This transitions to comments from Lee Westwood, Adam Scott, and other international players on the difficulty and concerns of re-joining the PGA Tour in its earliest months and their plans to probably avoid it. Also, they debate what will happen to the OWGR when the American tour resumes but the rest of the world is still paused. The strong fields that keep building in the PGA Tour’s first few events are celebrated. They close with a wide-ranging and rambling preview of The Match at Medalist, reviewing and critiquing some of the formats and side challenges, the course’s strengths and weaknesses, Shark Tales from the club’s history, how it will stack up to the Seminole match, and some intel from the ground on how Tiger might be setting it up in his favor. Oh, and Andy also tells a story about watching Jonathan Quinn play QB for the Bears. Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Pro Shop

Haters will say they’re fake. Shotgun Start hats are here, and they will be available for purchase at 1 p.m. ET today. We have four hats to choose from. Shop SGS and TFE gear in the Fried Egg Pro Shop!