Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers know a thing or two about winning NFL games on clutch plays inside the final 2 minutes, and the pair of future Pro Football of Famers proved that again Wednesday by translating their unique ability to size victory in make-or-break situations to the golf course. Rodgers sunk a walk-off 15-foot putt on the 12th and final hole of The Match to send him and Brady to a win over Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes at the Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas.
“I felt really good about [the putt], to be honest,” Rodgers said. “Tommy gave me a great read. I heard Trevor [Immelman] and Charles [Barkley] in my head telling me I was going to make it, and I felt good about the line when I hit it, I knew it was going in. It was a fun day.”
Rodgers ended the round as he began it on the first with that clutch birdie putt. Brady’s previous try on the 12th skirted past the hole but only after Allen nearly sunk what would have been an astoundingly impressive 80-footer. Also on the line for Allen’s putt was an offer from Barkley to jump into a lake surrounding the green, but the ball settled inches right of the hole, keeping the Chuckster dry for the rest of the evening.
Brady and Rodgers took an early 2 UP lead through the first couple holes, but Allen and Mahomes went on a run from there with the Chiefs quarterback doing the heavy lifting. Mahomes hit some world-class iron shots and even got the ball to back up on some of his approaches, which was a bit eye-opening. Once he started downing beers on the third hole, his driver straightened out a bit as well thanks to the imbibed “swing juice,” as broadcaster J.J. Watt called it.
Mahomes and Allen won the third hole to pull within one, and neither team led by more than one the rest of the way. The putter was the magic club for Mahomes throughout. He poured (and walked) them in from all over the yard as his squad tied Brady and Rodgers on the fifth. He made so many putts that I thought Jordan Spieth’s 2015 season was going to take off a Mahomes costume and reveal itself. The Allen-Mahomes team needed them, too, because Allen wasn’t bringing as much to the table as was advertised.
The youngsters kept surging and went ahead on the eighth hole, but Brady, who was erratic all day — even hitting a cold shank at one point — finally contributed something when he tied retied the match with a clutch putt of his own at the 10th to set the table for Rodgers at the last.
Immelman called out how well Rodgers had been putting it throughout the day — he also hit it well early on — just as the Packers star stepped up to his last putt and walked it in with a monstrous fist pump before it even got close to the cup.
As much fun as the early parts of the event were — Brady dropped an F-bomb on the first tee and Allen used golf balls with Brady’s infamous NFL Combine photo on them — it got a bit tense down the stretch as four ultra-competitive dudes went after the win.
“Things got pretty serious, and we buckled down a little bit,” Rodgers said. “These two were playing pretty good, and we didn’t want to come out of here with an L.”
Wednesday marked the sixth iteration of The Match overall but the first that did not include any professional golfers. Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau have all been prominently involved, as have Peyton Manning, Rodgers and Brady over the past few years. Mahomes and Allen were new to the party, but they certainly entertained and brought a ton of fans out with Chiefs Kingdom and Bills Mafia both well-represented.
This version of the event proved that while having pro golfers involved certainly brings more quality to the show, as long as thing run relatively quickly, there’s plenty of good banter, the golf is at least above average (which it was) and the broadcast is funny and lighthearted, this enterprise can work for as long as they want to keep showing it.
CBS Sports was with you the entire way updating this story with the latest scores, updates and highlights below.
