BlogWho will win Saturday’s matches?

Let’s pick the winners in Saturday’s 4 matches:

I sometime wonder about the Accenture Match Play Championship.  In a way this championship is a lot like dreaming about going out with the prom queen, getting your wish and hating every moment of the date.  That’s the problem with this championship, it seems impossible to have that dream match-up and after more marquee players lost on Friday we have to look at the prospect of a Louis Oosthuizen against Victor Dubuissen final on Sunday afternoon.

Now it’s not as bad as this, there are a lot of good possibilities for a great final on Sunday like Rickie Fowler against Jordan Spieth.  Would that be great having such a young matchup.  On the other end of the spectrum we can have a couple of oldtimers like Jim Furyk and Ernie Els fighting it out.  I think that your going to see Jason Day against Graeme McDowell, both seem unbeatable.

Talking about McDowell for the third day in a row he went to the last couple of holes a couple down and staged a big comeback.  On Wednesday he was 3 down with three to play, birdied 16, 17 and 18 to square the match, then birdied the first extra hole to beat Gary Woodland.  Then on Thursday he was 2 down after 14 but made birdies at 15 and 17 and then watched his opponent Hideki Matsuyama make bogey at 18 to give McDowell another victory.  On Friday get himself 2 down after 16, hit a poor drive at 17 but he was able to get par while Hunter Mahan made bogey.  Then up against it he birdied 18 to force extra holes and his par on the third extra hole beat Mahan.

McDowell wasn’t the only one that came back from the depths of losing, how about the Sergio Garcia/Rickie Fowler match.  Garcia got off quickly to a two up lead with birdies at 1 and 2 and kept that pace through six holes.  Then a very weird thing happened at 7, he had a six footer for par, while Fowler had a 17 footer for par.  Garcia looked over at Fowler and asked, “good, good?”  Of course Fowler agreed which some thought was very dumb on Garcia’s part until he won the next hole with a birdie.  So after 8 holes he was 3 up and was in the driver seat.  Until Fowler birdied 9 and 10 and when he tacked another birdie at 16 they were all square.  Fowler birdied 18 to complete the turnaround and showed that it doesn’t matter to be down after 15 holes because all that matters is what happens after 18.  As I said in my look at this match yesterday, Garcia is one of those jinx people that you can never predict, it’s really too bad that Garcia just can’t get the job done.

One person that got it done was Jim Furyk who for the first time in 14 tries makes it to the weekend.  He did it in dramatic fashion as he rallied from 3 down after six holes to Harris English the beat him 1 up.

Last but not least the biggest name still left is Ernie Els.  The secret to his game is always the putter and it’s been on target this week. He was able to beat last year’s U.S. Open winner Justin Rose on Thursday and took care of the defending PGA Champion Jason Dufner with a 1 up victory.

As for my picks I wasn’t able to go 8 for 8 but I did win 5 of 8. So for the week I am 34 of 56.  That means I have been able to get it right 61% of the time, anything over 50% is good. Couple of things of note on Saturday’s matches, two guys that have never been here before Jordan Spieth and Victor Dubuisson made it to the weekend, a rarity to see that happen to a rookie.  Last year Robert Garrigus got to the quarterfinals before losing to Matt Kuchar.  Oh other than first year winner Jeff Maggert, the only other rookie to win this event was Geoff Ogilvy in 2006.

So it sets up some good matches for Saturday afternoon.  Let’s look at them:

This week’s posts:

• We will  have our “Who should win” column on Saturday so join us everyday this week.