Bryson and Brooks: TBS Stirs the Pot for The Match with Photos and Promos

It seems like TBS Sports is already stirring the pot for The Match by having a promotional picture of Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka showing DeChambeau as shorter, when in fact, he’s an inch taller. Sort of like that ridiculous Time magazine cover of a prince and his wife, whose names are not going to be mentioned here, with the prince the same height as his wife when he’s actually several inches taller. What kind of photoshop shrinks people?  Maybe its like the old Shrinky Dink craft project where you heat up a drawing in the oven, and it gets smaller.

Is this Koepka’s PR team at work? Are they trying to get under DeChambeau’s skin? Is this just because the promoters of the event didn’t bother to look up who was taller than whom? Did they think golf fans don’t know this kind of thing? Or is it just to add some extra fodder for zings during the event.

If were talking height, Phil Mickelson, who will debut as an on course commentator for The Match, is taller than either of them, never mind golf enthusiast, TBS’ Charles Barkley who played in the NBA.

No matter how it happened,  DeChambeau, you can bet, sure didn’t sign up to lose an inch in stature to Koepka. As though to prove that, he climbed to the top of the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel, the 60th floor and beyond, to tee up drives aimed at a bullseye with Brooks Koepka’s face painted on it.

“Why is he smiling?” DeChambeau asked when he first saw the image 521 yards below the rooftop in the middle of a fairway.  “I’m going to hit his face.”

DeChambeau then went through some calculations. The height of his teeing area was 650 feet. He asked what the slope adjustment was from that altitude and was told 19 degrees. The wind was 9 MPH.( Only DeChambeau!)

The first tee shot was short of Koepka’s image. But DeChambeau wasn’t fazed. He continued to hit shot after shot, finally rolling one with shot tracer on it to within 20 yards.

After another mighty wallop he yelled, “It’s right on his nose!”

He was wrong. It was two feet short.

Apparently hitting Koepka from a height of 650 yards is actually pretty hard.

“We’re doing it right here, right now!” DeChambeau promised. “Stay on the target, baby!”

It did. Hitting the bullseye and even rolling beyond it.

“I just nailed Brooks’ big head from on top of the Wynn, 500 yards away. Now it’s time to go beat his butt in the real match!” DeChambeau said with a big smile.

Everyone not named DeChambeau or Koepka keeps trying to guess whether their feud is real or not.

“I’ll trash-talk anybody,” Keopka said at the Ryder Cup. “You don’t take it personal. It’s part of it.”

DeChambeau said after the Ryder Cup that he and Koepka had dinner at the Tour Championship and at the Ryder Cup and that everything was fine between them.

The big question is, has it been the PIP program driving the alleged controversy?

If so, it certainly raised both of their levels of popularity and name recognition.  Was their plan all along just to create headlines? Or are they just the lucky recipients of a brouhaha that was as much media driven as anything?

By the end of the Ryder Cup, they at least pretended to kiss and make up. But this coming Friday, the gloves get velcro-ed on and the drivers come out in full force for The Match.

Talk about must see TV!  The Match airs Friday, Nov. 26, 4 p.m. ET | 1 p.m. PT on TNT.