The All-Star match is a chance for golf to tap its dedicated celebrity following and fans’ insatiable thirst for content
It’s an immutable truth that inside every elite sportsman lives a frustrated professional golfer. While the rest of us dream about belting the winner in the Champions League final, clinching the men’s singles at Wimbledon with a backhand down the line, or scoring the opening touchdown in the Super Bowl, the people who have actually been and done all those things seem, often as not, to simply want to spend a little more time out on the course fantasising about how many majors they’d have now if they’d only made different choices when they had the chance.
Wednesday at the Ryder Cup is All-Star day, an event designed, in the large part, to give the TV companies something to screen in the run-up. This year’s roster ran the full celebrity spectrum from A to Z. At one end, Novak Djokovic, the most successful male tennis player in history. And at the other Garrett Hilbert, who dwells at that awkward level of fame where the organisers felt unable to mention his name without immediately adding an explanation of who he is, what he does, and how many fans he has, as if it was the best way to cover the inevitable awkward pause.
