For the NFL, late June is the time for no competition. Unless that competition is totally contrived and has nothing to do with football.
Enter the latest installment of The Match, a golf competition that started as two teams consisting of a pro golfer with a pro athlete from another sport and has become a quartet of non-golfers in a two-on-two battle. Last year, it was Old Goats (Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady) against Young Guns (Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen). This year, teammates from their own sports became teammates for the contest in Las Vegas.
And so it was Mahomes and Travis Kelce from the Chiefs, against Steph Curry and Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors. Mahomes and Kelce won.
Kelce’s quote after the victory was definitely on brand.“I wouldn’t mind coming back here in February and defending the title, baby,” he said, via CNN.com, in reference to the fact that the next Super Bowl will be played in that same city.
Mahomes was also on brand, too, using the event as another example of the value of teamwork.
“We knew coming into this that if I just played decent, we were going to have a chance,” Mahomes said, per CNN.com. “Steph’s a great golfer, I thought Klay did a good job out there today. But they didn’t have that team aspect that we had. . . . Literally, I would hit a terrible shot, Trav would hit a great one and vice versa. That’s what it takes in a team event like that and I think we went out there and showed what we can do.”
And Mahomes undoubtedly will find a way to use last night’s golf competition to further strengthen his bond with Kelce, making them even harder to beat when the 2023 season begins and the Chiefs try to become the first team to repeat since the 2003-04 Patriots.