BlogWGC-Accenture Match Play Championship Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

• Last week we touched on some of the problems with this year’s Match Play Championship, the main fact of Tiger Woods, Adam Scott and Phil Mickelson not playing.  It’s a very complex issue, for many fans they think it should be easy, these guys should show up for a big event like this.  But all players are independent contractors who make there own decisions on where they will play.  Could the tours force them to play, probably but in this day and age of litigation it’s a battle that nobody wants to fight.
• So the next question is why are these players not playing.  They won’t give us their personal thoughts, but as we pointed out last week all three have terrible records at the Golf Club at Dove Mountain.  That brings up a very valid thought, everyone loves certain courses and hates others.  It’s traditional for the Northern Trust to be played every year at Riviera or the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-am to be played every year at Pebble Beach but for this tournament and it’s format Match Play, it may be a problem playing the same course year in year out.  Just look at our performance chart, it’s easy to see that Dove Mountain is favored by Ian Poulter, Matt Kuchar, Nick Watney, Bubba Watson and Hunter Mahan.  So each year the event is played at the same course, it becomes a annuity for certain players and a burden for players like Woods, Scott and Mickelson who haven’t played well on it.  So the answer is easy, if there is one event that has to be moved at least every other year it’s this one.
• There is going to be a bunch of changes to this event after this year.  Tucson was suppose to be the answer to always having great weather, that didn’t work out and last year was a perfect example with snow wiping out the first round.  Tournament officials also have had a problem selling out tickets for this event.  Possibly it’s because Dove Mountain is way out of Tucson and a bit of a hassle to get to.  No matter, this event won’t be in Tucson next year.  With Accenture pulling it’s sponsorship, the World Golf Federation has to find a new sponsor and then figure out what is the best venue for that new sponsor.  One rumor floating around is that Cadillac, who sponsors a WGC event which is going to be played in two weeks at Doral, favors moving the tournament to Michigan, being close to it’s headquarters in Detroit.  On paper it seems easy, but a lot of logistics have to fall into place and one of them, if that event moves to Michigan it needs to be played at the tail end of May, not March.  So one of the rumors is that the WGC-Cadillac will move to Michigan and will take place in May, the week after the Players Championship.  This spot will open up with the end of the Wells Fargo Championship which home course will host the PGA Championship in 2017.  So with the Cadillac moving that leaves Doral without a golf course.  With all of the money that has been put into course renovations by Doral owner Donald Trump, he would love to have the match play championship.  With all of the changes to Doral, it could be a perfect match play course as many holes will have a lot of risk/reward characteristics like the new 16th hole which will have a lake in front of the driveable par-4.
• But the biggest rumor is that the Match Play will go to Harding Park in San Francisco.  That’s not the best course in the world for match play, but for a year or two we will have to live with it.  A lot will be on who the sponsor is and where that company would get the most out of the location of the tournament.
• Let’s dream a bit for a minute or two, we should really think about the kind of courses for the Match Play.  One of the boring aspects of Dove Mountain is there aren’t many risk/reward holes.  Yes they can put the tees up on the short par 4 15th hole, but the only real penalty is for a ball to go out in the desert.  Nothing like having some water, look at how successful the 17th hole at TPC Scottsdale.  A short par 4 that is very driveable with water to the left of the green big enough to catch a wayward drive.  This is the type of hole that is good for the match play.
• It’s also too bad that the championship can’t go to other countries.  Wouldn’t it be great to see the championship at Kidnappers or Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand for a year or two.  It could also go to Sweden and the Falsterbo Golf Club for a year.  How about Casa De Campo in Dominican Republic or Barnbougle in Tasmania, Koolau in Hawaii is a great course for Match Play along with the Stadium Course in La Quinta.  There is  Pinnacle Point in South Africa and on the European Tour last year their Match Play Championship was held at Thracian Cliffs in Bulgaria, a great course played over the Black Sea with half of the holes on cliffs over the water.  You get the point there are a lot of places to go, most of them wouldn’t be financially feasible but anything is possible.
• One last thing that we have to talk about is the format.  For the fan it’s great, a bit like in the Mad Max movie beyond the Thunderdoom in which they have a game to the death in which two men enter a stadium with only one man coming out alive.  The same could be said of this tournament, each day a player has to fight for his life in the tournament by beating his opponent.  For some like Tiger or Phil a lot is on the line if they lose.  Tiger may of won three times in 13 starts but he also has gone home three times in the first round.  For those that go home on Wednesday it’s not that bad, they get $46,000 for there days work.  This year former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover has played in ten events and only made $46,850 so you can see, $46,000 for a days work isn’t bad.  But for Tiger it just pays for the cost of his jet taking him back and forth from Florida.

So what about Joe Fan that loves this event?

• The average fan loves the format in which after every day, the field is cut in half.  But that has brought on some ugly final matches like in 1999 when Jeff Maggert played Andrew Magee or in 2002 when Kevin Sutherland faced off against Scott McCarron.  In some respects the earlier days are better for fans than the final weekend, but that is the weakness of Match Play.  When this tournament first started the dream was to have a Tiger/Phil final or a Tiger/Rory matchup.  About the closets to a dream matchup was probably in 2004 when Tiger Woods beat Davis Love III in the final.
• So the tournament in some respects hasn’t given us that great weekend of golf.  That is the reason when television came onto the scene in the 50s, match play wasn’t an option and stroke play became the only game in town.
• One suggestion, maybe tournament officials can have a tournament within a tournament.  On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 56 of the 64 players are losers.  How about letting them play a stroke play event over the weekend, it can be up to the players if they want to stick around or not.  Maybe they can have a million dollar purse with half the money going to the charity of the players choice with the winner getting half a million.  It wouldn’t be official money, but still a tournament within the match play.  TV would probably hate it but for the fans it lets the marquee names be around for the weekend.  Just a thought, but I will bet that next year the tours will tinker around with the format in some way, maybe utilize the round-robin approach that the European Tour uses in a effort to keep players around longer.  I for one hope they don’t lose the flavor of the match play in which two play and only one advances until there is nobody left.

Tournament information:

This will be the 16th World Golf Championship – Accenture Match Play championship.  Ritz-Carlton Golf Club is only the fourth different course to hold this championship. The previous home was the Gallery Golf Club for two years, before that the LaCosta Spa and Resort, which held the 1999, 2000, 2002 through 2006 events. In 2001 the Metropolitan Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia was the venue.

Course information:

• Golf Club at Dove Mountain
• Marana, Arizona
• 7,791 yards     Par 35-36–71
• Course has a 77.1 rating and slope rating of 147 fron the championship tees. Dove Mountain is a private club, but is open to the public that stays at the Ritz Carlton which is on the grounds.

Dove Mountain was designed by Jack Nicklaus and opened in November of 2008.  Nicklaus built 27 holes with a duality: to serve what the Ritz-Carlton people hope will eventually be a 450-member club and to be a spectator-friendly PGA Tour event.  Of the 27 holes built the event will be played on the Saguaro and Tortolita nines, unfortunely the Wild Burro nine which is Nicklaus favorite was considered to fan-unfriendly.

The course will be a par 72 and measure 7,791 yards.  The yardage is a bit misleading because it won’t play that long since it’s at 3,500 feet in elevation. Large greens with significant undulation, wide fairways and carries over desert washes define each course. The bunkering varies from classic, pot-style obstacles to expansive areas that stretch close to 80 yards along the edges of the fairways. The golf courses feature Bentgrass greens, while the tees, fairways and rough are Bermuda (with perennial rye overseed).

Now the big beef of the course was the undulations of the greens and some of the bunkers, course designer came in after the tournament in 2009 and soften some of the harsh ridges and slopes.  Three holes had some notable changes in bunkering, holes 4, 9 and 17.  With the changes officials  haven’t gotten the harsh feedback that the got that year but on the whole the course isn’t that well excepted on the PGA Tour by the players.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship:

Key stat for the winner:

On the PGA Tour, there are some players that look more at a big check instead of playing to win.  These players are dangerous in match play because they have only one thing to think about, winning.  So in some respects this year’s 19 Accenture rookies (Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Jonas Bilxt, Graham DeLaet, Victor Dubuisson, Harris English, Billy Horschel, Mikko Ilonen, Chris Kirk, Pablo Larrazabal, Marc Leishman, Joost Luiten, Hideki Matsuyama, Patrick Reed, Jordan Spieth, Kevin Stadler, Scott Stallings, Kevin Streelman, Jimmy Walker and Bernd Wiesberger) have just as much of a chance as Rory McIlroy, Henrik Stenson, Bubba Watson, Zach Johnson or Justin Rose.  Just look at what happened to Tiger Woods in 2002 when he got beat in the first round by Peter O’Malley or even in last year when Charles Howell III beat him on Wednesday.  So don’t think that just because Rory McIlroy, who was the number one draw is a better player than his first-round draw Boo Weekley.  The same with Henrik Stenson, on paper his match against Kiradech Aphibarnrat looks like David verses Goliath.  We all know what happened in that story and the same if both McIlroy or Stenson think twice about there opponets. It’s happened before and will happen in years to come.

Here are some more key stats to look to for this week:

• Dove Mountain is a risk/reward course.  All the par 5s are reachable in two, but if shots are missed, the penalty will be dear. The course has always favored the long hitters, which was dispelled a bit in 2012 with Luke Donald winning but one fact holds true, the course does favor those that hit lots of greens.
• Match play is a rare format on the PGA Tour.  Even though it’s the game that is played regularly in golf clubs around the world, its not played that much on the PGA Tour.  The secret to winning in match play is not playing the best, but, more importantly, avoiding doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.  In a lot of matches someone could be striking the ball perfectly and putting well while his opponent could be hitting it all over the lot, missing greens, but chipping in for halves on holes.  Before you know it that match could come down to the final hole and the player that isn’t doing the best could chip in and win a match.  It happens all the time.  Remember a score doesn’t mean anything in match play.
• A couple of things that can help you pick a winner is to look at those with good match play records.  Past winners of the U.S. Amateur like Ryan Moore and Edoardo Molinari know how to win in this format so they have a bit of an advantage. Also look at how strong Ian Poulter has been in the Ryder Cup, in this event and in the Volvo Match Play in Europe. Those that have won other match play events like Ernie Els and Poulter, those that do well in playoffs or with leads.
• Also look at players with good single records in the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. Players like Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and Jim Furyk.  Also players that have been doing well of late like Keegan Bradley, Jason Dufner and Bill Haas should do well this week.
• But the most difficult place to pick winners is the 32 first-round matches. If you can pick halve of them right you are a super star.  As an example in 2011 18 of the top 32 top seeded won, in 2010 20 of the 32 won, in 2009 19 won the same in 2008,  21 of the 32 won in 2007, while in 2006 19 of the 32 top seeds won. In 2005, 13 of the 32 top seeds won while in 2004, 12 of the 32 top seeds prevailed so you can see that 12 underdogs won last year, 19 in 2005 and 20 in 2004
• In this format, inexperience and being a long shot is sometimes a plus. As a perfect example, over the years the No. 1 seed has a 37-12 record, thanks in part to Tiger Woods winning three times.  The 19th seed has a 23-114 record while the No. 44 seed has a 17-14 record. What’s more, the 59th seed has a 14-15 record. Yes, the first seed has an advantage, but it doesn’t guarantee a victory.

This week’s posts:

• Sometime on Monday we will have a look and breakdown of all 32 matches.  We will also have video breakdowns of all the matches.
• We will also have our “Who should win” column after play on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday so join us everyday this week.