How Wimbledon Proves Sudden Death Is Unnecessary

Wimbledon scoffs at fifth or third set tiebreaks.  How could a match that has gone the distance be relegated to the equivalent of the NHL shootout to determine who moves on in a major championship?  Even the NHL scraps the shootout during the playoffs in favor of a more pure way of finishing the game.  In times when true history is on the line in sport, the winner should be revealed by playing the actual sport.

Last year's Roddick-Federer Wimbledon final allowed us to make the case for a return to match play at the PGA Championship. Read about it here.

Yesterday, Wimbledon's format stubbornness proved to be an epic, brilliant decision.  American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut played a tremendous offensive match through four sets.  Service games for both were nearly automatic leading into the decisive set of the first round match, and that trend continued in the final set.  It continued for 118 completed games.  The match has lasted ten hours in total and resumes this afternoon to let these players figure out who wins.  They were not boxed into a miniaturized version of the game through a tiebreak.  The players were given the space to finish their match off just as it started.

Golf should do the same with its playoff formats in the major championships.

Since the 1976 decision by the Masters to introduce a sudden death playoff format for its green jacket, the sport has been moving at a glacial pace (still fast for golf) toward shorter playoffs.  The British Open relented in the late nineties by moving to a four hole, aggregate score playoff.  Paul Lawrie won Jean Van de Velde's Open in '99 at Carnoustie in that playoff. 

The PGA of America, happy perhaps with that result - namely the merciful end of a Justin Leonard, Paul Lawrie, and Jean Van de Velde playoff - adopted a similar three hole, aggregate score playoff in time for the 2000 PGA Championship.  That very year at Valhalla, Tiger Woods battled Saturday morning Golf Channel wiz Bob May for Woods' third major in a row.  The memory of Tiger's walking in of the birdie on the first playoff hole aside, May had no chance to recover after that since the final hole, a par five, would give a sure advantage to Woods.

The US Open is the only stalwart and purist when it comes to the golf playoff.  The National Open is decided with an 18 hole playoff the next day.  Then, and only then, if there remains a tie do they relent to sudden death.  (At a certain point, repeating rounds of golf just gets ridiculous.)  Woods in the spotlight example again showed in '08 what the format can mean.  Millions of fans watched the playoff on television and the Internet.  Billions of dollars were lost in productivity to watch Rocco Mediate give one-legged Woods his best shot.  It went to a single extra hole before Mediate relented Woods' 14th major title. 

Or perhaps turn to the 1962 US Open playoff between Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.  How incredible would that have been to see live on television and online?  Nicklaus won his first major in that playoff.  Forty-seven years later, Nicklaus spoke last year about playoff formats in golf today.

"Do I think it's the best for the interests of the game today, for television, the people? No, probably not. I think the Masters has been very practical with that, the PGA Championship has been practical with that and the British Open has been practical with that.

"But the USGA has looked at it more as a golf tournament than a TV show. I think that as our national championship, that's fine. I wish the British Open would have stayed there, too, but they didn't."

The counter argument could be made that Larry Mize's stunning chip-in to steal the Masters from Greg Norman would have been rendered meaningless were it not for sudden death.  But the other Masters sudden death finales have not been duels of excellence.  They have been brief, often mildly upsetting affairs.  At the same time, the Mark Brooks-Retief Goosen playoff for the US Open was just dreadful from Southern Hills.

Brooks & Goosen, though, could have been an equally epic match all the same as Isner/Mahut has been.  Were the golf great throughout the day and had it come down to the wire or required extra holes, the Open would have been historic in the same way that Woods/Mediate became an instant classic.

Sure, television and media rule the day.  It's an ironic statement considering the state of the business, but it's true.  If people won't watch it, then why broadcast it.  Bravo should consider that when renewing any of the Real Housewives spinoffs, but I digress.  Golf has relented to ratings and momentum.  Other sports continue to show, though, that purity of format at the highest level really is worth the sacrifice in time and ratings.  It creates a real appreciation for the appetite to win that the athletes have and, frankly, makes for better television.