{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
Did you know that as of 12:45 p.m. last Friday, a $3 bet with Cole Hammer on your “team” could have netted you as much as a $25 windfall after the second round of the AT&T Byron Nelson?
I didn’t, until I looked it up. But here’s the key:
I found out through a link on the PGATour.com homepage.
Such is the state of play in 2021. The world’s top professionals still vie for major championships and ever-growing financial rewards. But 54-handicap Sam also can take a swing at cashing his own small check ... based on the results posted by those top professionals, that is.
The game retains its inherent beauty and you don’t need a piece of the action to appreciate it. We all can still marvel at tweeted video snippets of Rory McIlroy’s swing, just as those earlier once did watching TV coverage of Couples and Ballesteros, or newsreel footage of Hogan and Snead.
But the action’s always been there, too. You might have snagged an extra buck or two from somebody in your foursome, post-round, while sipping a beer in front of a TV in the grill room of your club. Now, there’s money to be made (or lost) with a click on your phone, tablet or laptop. And you’re competing with slicks or suckers from as far away as the internet can reach.
In fairly recent memory, the online experience involved the website of some offshore booking operation. But now it carries the imprimatur of the PGA Tour itself. Which, it should not be forgotten, gets its own taste of the action. Even though the true coin of the realm for the tour in this case is known as “fan engagement.”
So, armed with an editor’s storehouse of golf knowledge but practically zero experience or savvy with games of chance, I wandered into the wide and burgeoning world of online betting on Friday.
There are myriad options. My game was called “PGA Tour Showdown $100 Birdie.” Up to 39 entries were on offer, with the chance to claim a payout from a total purse of $100. The top prize was $25 for the player who drafted the highest-performing group of six golfers from Friday’s afternoon wave of starters at TPC Craig Ranch in Texas.
Players are assigned values, and a team of six needed to be assembled for a maximum (figurative) “salary cap” of a combined $50,000. For me, even getting a grasp on the rules was a little perplexing. I wound up going with three top earners (Bryson DeChambeau, Marc Leishman and Brooks Koepka) along with a sleeper who’d had a good first round (Luke Donald), and two budget picks (amateurs Hammer and Pierceson Coody) with local pedigree.
Birdies earn points for a team, and my players carded too few of them. Bogies subtract from a team’s point total, and my guys had too many of those.
The day’s result: A finish in 32nd place out of the 39 players. And a payout of $0.
I’m filing it away as a fact-finding experiment gone predictably bad.
But I learned I’ll be very happy going forward to just enjoy Rory’s swing and keep my cash in my pocket.
E-MAIL SAM
Sam Dolson