Everyone looks at Tom Brady and Peyton Manning as mortal enemies. But while they typically do battle on the football field for AFC bragging rights (and will again in 2013 when the Patriots and Broncos meet), it's a pretty good bet they actually like one another.
Case in point: Manning and Brady teamed up recently to take down a pair of businessmen in what Manning told theMMQB.com was "a very private round of golf" that nearly featured Manning and Brady falling to "Ed and Sam."
“Both of us felt like it was one of our biggest victories," Manning said. “We could not lose to these guys, because we knew it would go viral, within minutes."
The victory was well deserved, too, as the pair was teamed up against Ed and Sam in a best-ball match and entered hole No. 17 at a course "near Pebble Beach" with the businessmen having a "one-stroke lead." (It was probably a "one-hole lead," which seems like semantics but makes the story a lot spicier; plus that's usually how you score in best ball. Anyway.)
Brady proceeded to birdie No. 17 and then Manning birdied No. 18, giving the pair of future Hall of Famers a victory over the biz suits who were looking to hang one of the coolest-sounding pelts ever on their wall. I mean, you take down Manning and Brady in a best-ball golf match? You're going to tell that story approximately eleventy billion times over the next five years.
Alas it didn't work out. Manning and Brady are superb at football and, by all accounts, quite good at golf. Brady's generally a renowned golfer (he even had an Entourage cameo playing golf) and Manning's already got a 77 at Augusta and a hole-in-one near Denver on his offseason links résumé.
There are plenty of everyman scratch golfers; athletes getting beat by normal folks in golf shouldn't be that shocking. But Brady and Manning certainly managed to avoid a nightmare story -- and secured a monster victory -- by stepping up in the clutch. That sounds about right.
