Aug 22, 2018 4 min read

Woods-Mickelson PPV match is on

The winner-take-all match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson is on.

WarnerMedia says it has secured the rights for a pay-per-view event it is promoting as “The Match.” It will be 18 holes between Woods and Mickelson held Thanksgiving weekend at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. The winner will receive $9 million.

The pay-per-view cost is to be announced later.

Woods announced that the match was on in a tweet , setting off Twitter banter with Mickelson , who only signed up for a Twitter account Wednesday.

WarnerMedia says pay-per-view coverage will be distributed through Turner’s B/R Live, AT&T DirecTV and U-verse, and other on-demand platforms. HBO Sports and Bleacher Report will take part in the promotion.

Woods and Mickelson will make side bets during the match on such things as longest drive or closest to the pin.

W&J golf team

first in PAC

After winning its 10th Presidents’ Athletic Conference team title since 2000 last spring, the Washington & Jefferson College men’s golf program was selected as the favorite in this year’s PAC preseason coaches’ poll, as voted on by the league’s seven head coaches.

The results of the poll were announced along with the conference’s players to watch list Wednesday.

W&J has won a PAC-best 18 team titles since the conference’s first championship event in 1956.

The Presidents were last favored in a preseason coaches’ poll in August of 2015 after edging runner-up Saint Vincent College by five strokes to win the 2014-15 team title at Cedarbrook Golf Course in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania.

At The Meadows

Crystal Fashion rebounded nicely from his tough beat as the Hambletonian favorite, putting away the field with a powerful first over bid and sprinting off to a 5-length victory in 1:53 – a track record for 3-year-old gelding trotters – in Wednesday’s $167,288 Pennsylvania Sires Stake at The Meadows. Lawmaker took the other split in the event known as the Hickory Smoke.

Crystal Fashion won his Hambletonian elimination but was parked throughout the final, losing by only 1-1/4 lengths. Following that maximum effort, trainer Jim Campbell and owner Jules Siegel of Fashion Farms decided to skip the Zweig to give Crystal Fashion more time to recover and earn PASS points in the Hickory Smoke.

That strategy paid off Wednesday as the son of Cantab Hall-Window Willow, the 1-9 favorite, exploded from third down the backside for Tim Tetrick, put away Scirocco Rob and erased the previous record of 1:53.2 set by Lady’s Dude. Scirocco Rob was a clear second, with early leader Hill Street third.

“Anytime you come out of a two-heat race, you’re always concerned with how they’ll bounce back,” Campbell said. “But he looked as good as he’s ever been. He seems to like (first-over trips). He’s a pretty laid-back horse, and he likes just riding up there.”

The win lifted Crystal Fashion’s lifetime bankroll to $686,974 and propelled him into the $252,000 PASS championship set for Sept. 2 at Pocono.

Lawmaker lacked the points to reach the championship, but his win was impressive nonetheless. He zipped to the point from post 7 for Anthony MacDonald and rolled home in 1:53.4, 8-3/4 lengths ahead of the rallying Exarch, with Can’t Afford It third. A key point in the race came at the quarter, where MacDonald and Lawmaker wouldn’t release Whats The Word in his bid for the lead.

“I wouldn’t have let my mother go at that point,” MacDonald said. “We’d had everything our own way. Obviously, it was a tremendous heartbreak when he broke stride in the Hambletonian, but he bounced back. When he was younger and green, he’d wait for them on the front end. He was all business today. I never even pulled the ear plugs.”

Andrew Harris trains the son of Muscle Massive-Pretty Amigo, who now boasts $286,247 in career earnings, for Thestable Lawmaker group.