Last night’s Big Break Atlantis made sense. Good play was rewarded and bad shots were penalized. The best players rose like cream to immunity. The golfer with consistently bad play for the past month was cut. The show, while highlighting the particular challenge of Big Break, also made me question its value as a finder of talent.

Captains Marcela, Kelly and Gloriana headed up three teams in the first competition. It was a combo race/golf hole where teams earned points for number of shots and time taken to make par. Marcela’s team smoked the others, scoring a birdie 3 and beating the other teams by 5-20 seconds. They were safe. That put the remaining girls into a contest to avoid the elimination round. A variation on the game Wolf was used with each girl pitting her shot against two others. When the dust settled, Anya and Aubrey faced final elimination. In a rout, Aubrey was sent to the house. Honestly, she was lucky to have made it this far. The show will be better without her whiny excuses.

This week I really noticed the games the girls have win. I guess it was the sprinting from shot to shot that made everything seem a little absurd. Usually they are required to walk up (or run) to an arbitrary location and hit a shot existing in complete isolation from anything else. This seems very foreign to the game of golf. It is more “Golf Skills.” Grinding, persisting, holding it together, or finding your swing when it’s gone, these are required to win over 18/54 or 72 holes. This show magnifies pressure, tension and drama, but I still wonder if it reveals great golfers.

Rick Cole

See Big Break Atlantis Episode 3 Recap Here