I was in throwback mode yesterday.

Jonesing for some Pink Floyd, I queued Wish You Were Here on the iPod and skipped directly to one of my all-time favorite tracks, “Welcome to the Machine.”

Instantaneously, I went into sports mode. How in the hell I segued from “throwback mode” to “sports mode” as a result of a heavily synthesized diatribe about the music industry, I have yet to figure out. But I do know with certainty that this nonsense about the pairing of Tiger with Phil for the first two rounds of the Open is a heavily processed product in and of itself, its origin lying in an unremitting machine we know as “media desperation” (perhaps the most palpable redundancy I have ever typed).

The words I have heard bandied about to describe this event—“unprecedented” not being the least among them—make it sound as if Woods and Mickelson are breaking down some sort of cultural barrier. If you consider utter dominance matching shots with utter goofball to be one of these barriers, then so be it.

The hype I have heard surrounding this event—“absurd” not being worst word I could use to describe it—makes it sound as if Woods and Mickelson are destined to match 63s on Thursday, fight to a bitter and bloody stalemate on Wii Boxing during the night, see who can attack the breakfast buffet with more ferocity on Friday morning, and settle things once and for all during the afternoon. Two years ago, Lefty wins at the buffet stage by T.K.O. With Trimmed Lefty bursting onto the scene, however, less is more and things get interesting.

What machine could manufacture such misplaced hype for something not all that unprecedented? ESPN is too easy an answer, because just like CNN or any of its peers starve for political bloodletting, “sports media” in general love to play miracle worker and fashion something from nothing (see: Jordan vs. Drexler, ca. 1992). What these people fail to understand is that there is no such thing as “Tiger vs. Phil” on the first two days of a golf tournament, because there are 154 other competitors that are part of the battle. To be sure, only a handful of these 154 will be at the top vying for the championship on Sunday. By the same token, there’s no guarantee that Tiger and Phil will both join that handful.

Golf rivalries don’t manifest themselves in the moment, but over time, as mettles have been tested week-by-week and results have played out. And in the case of Tiger vs. Phil, there is no rivalry. Phil is Tiger’s rival no more than the Knicks were rivals of Jordan’s Bulls—there may have been heat between the two, but more often than not, Phil loses and the Knicks lost. But even that analogy fails, because where Chicago and New York had legitimate dislike for each other, the animosity between Woods and Mickelson is next to nonexistent. Any animosity is mostly the media creation of which I speak, a creation that does nothing to better the quality of the sport and serves only to manufacture talking points that can be relentlessly and needlessly debated for hours on end.

The bigger storyline is Tiger’s knee. The bigger storyline is whether or not Lefty can take advantage of an Open course that is as favorable to him as any course could possibly be. Ignoring these real subplots and replacing them with unabashedly embarrassing buildup is a fruitless exercise. At the end of the day, the only people gripped by the rivalry are the ones who created it, and as a result, the viewer has to listen to the blathering and do one of two things: (1) be immersed by it or (2) make fun of it. The latter is way more fun. The latter is way more warranted.

No, I’m not rooting for a Mickelson 76 and a Tiger 73 on day one, but I do want this rivalry that never was to take a backseat to the golf. For some reason, I think that will happen with great haste for one reason:

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson could give a damn if they’re paired with each other.

They could care less about the machine.