Help Please! Help with a word/expression.

[Matnov]

I need some help. Working on a final draft and I have hit a brick wall with a single line/word/expression. I have two characters who play out a weekly game of golf which has turned into something more than just a game. It has become a highly personalised struggle between the two characters, with all sorts at stake, and I want to express that with a classical expression or foreign word or similar that donates such a contest. And I am stumped. Absolutely been racking my brains and have hit a complete mind freeze. Even Norman the Muse has not been able to help me out. Open to all and any suggestions as I can work in whatever hits the right buttons. Thanks in advance.

 

[Les of Edith Weston]

Un duel à mort?

 

[Marc Joan]

'Twas as though in some Hellenic bar we saw Scylla, having downed his third amphora, grasping Charybdis by the throat while growling "Oy! Are you looking at my bird?"

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I just keep envisioning the Vulcan death grip--so casual, so brutal.

 

[James Marinero]

Gladiatorial

 

[Peggy Lou]

...throwing a hit, taking a step back, sparring like two prizefighters at a world cup final.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

It sounds like the golfing version of Ridley Scott's first film, The Duellists. This was based on a Joseph Conrad short story, drawn from a real-life series of duels in the Napoleonic era.

Taking a cultural side step, it also made me think of the lyric from Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer:

We've gotta hold on ready or not.
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

 

[Matnov]

Gladiatorial

Certainly lights up a few bulbs.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Mano a mano

 

[KG Christopher]

Each swing of the club only added to the perpetual vendetta that chained them together. Blood was surely to be spilt.

 

[Marc Joan]

Cockfight.

 

[Sea-shore]

Golf is just one game in the bigger game of life.

 

[Patricia D]

a metaphor for life

death struggle

 

[Jay Aitch]

raison d'être:
NOUN (plural raisons d'être pronounced same) - The most important reason or purpose for someone or something’s existence:seeking to shock is the catwalk’s raison d'être.

or

cause célèbre:
NOUN (plural causes célèbres pronounced same)
controversial issue that attracts a great deal of public attention:suddenly, saving the station’s architectural integrity became a cause célèbre

or

fait accompli
A thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it:the results were presented to shareholders as a fait accompli

(please note, all definitions sourced from the Oxford English Dictionary Online)

French Phrases and Sayings that are used in English - meaning and origin. on Phrases.org.uk

Hope these can help