Expectations were not necessarily high for The Match: Champions for Charity -- featuring Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning vs.

Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady -- at Medalist Golf Club on Sunday, but what played out in the rain exceeded even the most optimistic view of how this event would perform.

Instead, it became the golf event of the year to this point.

Whether he was jabbing at Charles Barkley or throwing alley-oops to Mickelson, he carried the broadcast at times in a way I just did not expect.

Also -- let's not allow Woods' brilliance to overshadow this -- Lefty quietly played some really solid golf throughout the day.

Brady hit his putt to somewhere around 6 or 7 feet on the first hole of alternate shot, and Tiger -- who had his own putt from off the green for birdie and the win on the hole -- told Mickelson to pick it up.

Brady looked glad for the par gift, but a suddenly-concerned Mickelson turned to him with a very anxious look on his face and said, "That's actually not a good sign," referring to Tiger's confidence.

Woods missed the birdie, but it was an amazing look into a moment that's emblematic of the way Woods and Mickelson have coexisted over the last 25 years.

The microphone situation was also terrific -- at certain points Manning was just stringing uninteresting words together, and I was transfixed -- but it was the earpieces that made the broadcast work and not just because it's always been Tiger's dream to play a big-money match with an earpiece. ?

At one point, this meant we got Brooks Koepka and Brady talking to each other before Brady teed off, which was just incredible to listen to considering Koepka put a challenge out on Twitter to donate money if Brady could simply make a par on the front nine?

The most incredible part was that, even with Mickelson losing his mind up ahead of him, Brady reacted as if he'd just completed a 15-yard out route on second down.

Again, it was an exhibition, but he looked ready to play a real PGA Tour event at a high level on Sunday after not having played in an event since the middle of February.

Wouldn't that make more sense at this point -- with the institutional knowledge he has and with where his swing is at -- than trying to grind things out at middle-of-the-road events on the PGA Tour just so his game is sharp (whatever that means) for the U.S.

If it had gone the other way -- if golfers had started hot and faded to the ridiculous later in the match -- I don't think the event would have played out as well as it did!

Maybe it's simply because Brady was so bad early on, but Manning's consistency was impressive.

And his iron play was -- at times throughout the day -- better than that of Mickelson.

One of the big takeaways for me over the course of these two weeks -- with six big PGA Tour names and two famous quarterbacks playing -- is that golf kind of works within the coronavirus pandemic

It would be a tough look in these times to watch a sport in which guys were bodying up against each other or breathing on each other all the time, but golf -- where you can naturally social distance and never really have to touch -- well, it sort of works

He covers golf, writes poetry about Rory McIlroy's swing, stays ready on Tiger watch and loves the Masters more than anyone you know...