PRIME-TIME PLAYERS

So it’s the guy in the swoosh against the guy in the shades.

That’s the brand lineup for golf’s first prime-time television experiment, which bolts from the laboratory today when Tiger Woods plays David Duval in a highly publicized, often criticized--and maybe even potentially popular--match-play event at Sherwood Country Club.

No one is really sure what kind of rating this golf show is going to get on ABC--it’s on at 5 p.m. here, 8 p.m. in the East--but some have said it might wind up with something around a 5.0, about the same rating as a typical college football game. It may also be the exact number of people in the gallery at the first tee.

It’s clear there’s a lot at stake for everybody, with the possible exception of the agent-o-rama called IMG, which sold the rights to the event to ABC for $1.5 million and doesn’t have any money worries except how to make some more of it.

For Woods, he can prove he is indeed the No. 1 player in the world. Of course, if he loses, he’s still the No. 1 player in the world. This can’t be a bad thing.

As for Duval, well, he gets to spend a few hours out on the golf course and not get asked a single question about the blasted Ryder Cup.

Meanwhile, the situation over at ABC is a little different. The question is whether anybody is going to watch . . . that is, anyone besides the lifers who would tune in anyway, even if Woods were playing Will Smith, which is what he did a couple of weeks ago at Sherwood.

There is no question that Woods is the programming key, since without his presence there would be no prime-time show. This is what Curtis Strange was talking about last week when he told television writers on a conference call that the show had to involve Woods “and a second person.”

Yes, that would be Duval, playing the part of the second person.

You have to admit that the marketing machinery really needed Duval, if only because a “Tiger-Duval Showdown at Sherwood” is a heck of a lot easier to sell than a “Tiger-Second Person Showdown at Sherwood.”

Financially, there will be no losers, because the winner gets $1.1 million and the second person gets $400,000. Each player donates $200,000 to charity.

There actually is a loser in the process. His name is Greg Norman, who got upset with the PGA Tour (again) when the tour approved Sherwood as the site of the event. Norman was angry because his own event, the Franklin Templeton Shark Shootout, is also going to be held at Sherwood and he fears the place will be golfed-out by mid-November when the Shootout is played.

So Norman is going to take his tournament and go home. Next year, the Shootout will be played at a Norman-designed course back home in Naples, Fla.

It’s not exactly perfect timing. If exclusivity is the reason for moving, it appears Norman has made a slight miscalculation. The Shootout thus becomes the fourth tournament in Naples, that well-known hotbed of professional golf tournaments, joining an LPGA event, a Senior PGA Tour event and the Home Depot Invitational, a PGA Tour-sanctioned special event.

Easier to understand is what the match proves. Nothing.

It’s merely a midsummer television show with golf as the programming and as long as everybody gets the point, then we’re down with the whole thing.

The only real problem with the notion of Woods-Duval is that it represents a rivalry when there actually isn’t one. That’s not going to happen until they go down the wire in a major, head-to-head, swoosh to shades. There has been none of that so far.

In fact, Woods and Duval spent the last couple of years going out of their way to downplay any notion of a rivalry when the media were trying to drum one up, then suddenly embraced the idea faster than you can say “rights fee” when they found out they could make some major bucks out of it.

That’s commerce, though, so no harm done.

Speaking of commerce, tickets cost $100 to walk the grounds and $550 to hang out at the clubhouse, eat in the buffet and park somewhere in the same county. So far, there hasn’t been a real rush to get in. Showdown at Sherwood tickets have been selling like Clipper tickets.

None of this matters, of course. Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg of IMG, called the event a “sponsor give-back,” meaning the players’ corporate sponsors such as Nike, Titleist, American Express, Rolex, Oakley and Tommy Hilfiger, are going to get the schmooze treatment.

Not only that, but the reps from all these sponsors can play just for fun on Tuesday, when a shotgun tournament is scheduled at Sherwood.

Unless, of course, it’s moved to Naples.