DC ExtraTime: The Challenge Goes Holey Moley

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

All photos except The Challenge courtesy ABC

Usually, sports fans this time of year would be thinking of action on the diamond, on our own soccer pitches, on the free agency front and a slew of major championship events during this Summer of Sports. But 2020 has been totally different: a global pandemic has dramatically altered our athletic schedule both here at home and abroad, but where something called MTV's The Challenge has served as comfort food to sports & TV fans alike with Season 35 of Total Madness having just crowned its two worthy champions from America and Britain.

One sport that has been part of the relaunch of live competition globally in the past month & a half is one which traditionally sees many of its biggest tournaments take place during the summertime. Golf generally shines the brightest as does the weather when the last three legs of the game's four major championship tournaments take place between May & August. But this year has seen one of them, The Open Championship in the U.K., get nixed because of COVID, and two others in The Masters and the U.S. Open have been moved to the fall to follow the PGA Championship that's slated for next month in San Francisco.

Last week saw these two worlds of the fifth major pro sport and this quaint little game collide in time for the conclusion of Total Madness. But instead of a place as breathtaking as Augusta National, Pebble Beach or St. Andrews in Scotland, the venue was something more different where it's much shorter and where you have only one club to play with. And it's also the toughest one in all the land... and one of those who took to that course also went through the same kind of brutal conditions that Bananas, Jenny and the Total Madness final nine had to put up with... say hello to Holey Moley.