BlogMatch Play Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

One thing that is certain, for the first time since the LaCosta and Harding Park days it seems everyone is happy with the venue.  After taking it to several courses in a span of ten years, Austin Country Club seems to be the perfect home for the Match Play.  The course may not be liked by 100% of the field like LaCosta was, but only a small handful of players aren’t completely happy with Austin C.C.  But another problem is now looming and that is the timing of this event.  It was well received in the days when it was played at the end of the west coast swing.  When the event moved in 2015 to the end of April and the first part of May, the week before the Players, the timing was ok.  But now two weeks after the WGC-Mexico and two weeks before the Masters, players aren’t happy.  This is probably a good time for the PGA Tour, who is evaluating a possible move of the Players to March, that possibly having a big event two weeks before the Masters may not work.  So the tour needs to do something with this so called Florida swing/pre-Masters run of golf.  What is the answer?  Probably move the WGC-Mexico to end at the end of the west coast swing, start the Florida swing and have the Players three weeks before the Masters and then move the Match play to the end of April or the start of May.  For 2018 the Tour is stuck with Mexico coming the week after the Honda, but you can bet that changes will come for 2019.

Three years ago when Jason Day beat Victor Dubuisson on the fifth extra hole, the Dell Match Play had a lot of problems.  The biggest was their sponsor, Accenture, who was leaving which created a problem for the World Federation in securing another one.  Next was the venue, Dove Mountain was barley tolerable but did have a Ritz Carlton for the sponsors but Tucson wasn’t the draw that many thought it would be.  The course wasn’t a favorite of many except for Ian Poulter, Matt Kuchar, Nick Watney, Bubba Watson and Hunter Mahan who made that site an annuity for them.  It became a disadvantage for many and even though they didn’t say it, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott took a pass manly because of the course.  Many cited the fact that this event should be moved around so that it didn’t give a group of players an advantage each year but let’s face the one ton gorilla and that was the format.  For most, pure Match Play in which if you lose you go home was not a big winner with players, fans, TV and the media.  The sight of half of your marquee names going home on Wednesday didn’t help matters either.  In the 16 years of the tournament you never had that one great final with the number one ranked player against the number two.  Even with Tiger Woods making it to the final match four times, it was against Darren Clarke (who beat him), David Toms, Davis Love III and Stewart Cink.  Guess we should of seen this when the very first final match in 1999 pitted superstars Jeff Maggert and Andrew Magee.

So when Day finally beat Dubuisson on the fifth extra hole it put an exclamation point onto this event.  Many felt that the event would not continue, which was wrong thinking.  But with Accenture out of the picture, the contract with Dove Mountain finished it was time to reevaluate everything about the Match Play Championship.  It took a bit but a stop-gap sponsor in Cadillac was found and the event moved dates to late April and the venue was Harding Park in San Francisco.  That move was more of a way to appease the city of San Francisco who had a contract with the PGA Tour to play a number of events over a long period of time.  Still Harding Park, which held the 2009 Presidents Cup and 2005 WGC-American Express Championship was a site that people could embrace.  But the most important element that those that ran the championship did was change the format.

It was still match play but no more single elimination matches the first three days, the field was broken up into 16, four-player groups and over the first three days everyone played the other three men in their group and the player with the best record in each group advanced to the Round of 16.  From there the event went back to single elimination match play but the focus was that all 64 players were around three days so that fans and TV had three great days of action.

The format worked in 2015, after Friday’s play marquee names like Rickie Flower, Hideki Matsuyama, Charl Schwartzel, Lee Westwood, Paul Casey, Jim Furyk and Rory McIlroy were still playing.  McIlroy went on to win which helped verify that the format worked.  In 2016 they jiggled a bit the playoff format the first three days, but the three-day round robin was a big success as the weekend saw lot’s of marquee players with Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day, with Day winning over British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen.

When the sun set that Sunday in San Francisco back in 2015 the Match Play Championship was brought back from the dead.  The crowds were good and enthusiastic, weather was great and the golf was spectacular but the one negative was the course, Harding Park is very boring and not a great course for Match Play.  This had been the biggest problem with the Match Play championship as the previous four courses that held it along with Harding didn’t give the excitement and challenges to the championship.  Still there was a lot of excitement with some of the changes that came out of San Francisco.  First was a new sponsor, as Dell computer would be the title sponsor, signing on through 2019.  Along with Dell and new location and venue was named, Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas.

When it was announced not many folks knew about Austin Country Club other than legendary teaching professional was the club’s resident instructor for over 70 years before his death in 1995.  Another thing was that the club, which was founded in 1899, built a new course in 1984 and hired Pete Dye to do the course.  Because the course is ultra private not many knew how wonderful the course really was.  Last year when the course was announced as the new home of the Match Play for the next three years, it closed for ten months as renovations were done to bring the course up to standards of the modern player.

The course held up and was embarrassed by all.  Attendance was good and the event was interesting all five days, so the PGA Tour got it right, except for one little thing, the date.  Five players are no-shows, #5 Henrik Stenson, #8 Adam Scott, #9 Rickie Fowler, #13 Justin Rose and #51 Adam Hadwin and this is a problem and hopefully in the future a new date will please all.

Tournament information:

This will be the 19th World Golf Championship – Dell Match Play championship.  Austin Country Club is the sixth different course to hold this championship. In 2015 TPC Harding Park held the event for one year. The previous home was the Golf Club at Dove Mountain for six years and before that the Gallery Golf Club held it 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:

• Austin Country Club
• Austin, Texas
• 7,108 yards     Par 35-36–71
• Course has a 75.2 rating and slope rating of 152 fron the championship tees. Austin Country Club is a private club eight miles northwest of downtown Austin.  The club was formed in 1899 and the first course was nine holes with sand greens.  It’s believed that the course and club was the first of its kind organized in Texas.  The course grew to 18 holes but in 1949 was deemed to be too small so the club moved to east Austin and had Perry Maxwell build them a new course.  This would be the course where Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw would spend so many hours under the watchful eye of Harvey Penick. The Club remained at the Riverside Drive location until 1984, at which time the decision was made to move to the current Davenport Ranch location in the hills of west Austin.
• Dye was chosen to create the new course and was given 180 acres of diverse terrain that goes from golf in the hills weaving through canyons and woodlands and then juts out to the lowlands that has a river border one side of the course.  So there are different natural features to every one of the holes making it a delight.  You will see a touch of TPC at Sawgrass, Blackwolf Run and Oak Tree Country Club to name some courses that have held professional events on.
• More importantly the course isn’t very long and will have a lot of risk and reward type of shots, the kind that will make for great Match Play golf.  All of the par 5s will be reachable and the 12th will be the favorite, as water from the river runs the final 150 yards on the left of the hole, goes right up along the left of the green and beyond the green.  So we will see a lot of drama as players decide to go for the green and the shot that will take to get on.  The next hole plays with water in front of the green and all along the left side.  Since the hole plays 317 yards it will challenge players to take driver out and go for it, only problem the player has to hold a driver on the green which makes the shot almost impossible.   But players will still try to get it close.
• As for the par 3s, all of them are great from the shortest the 145 yard, 17th to the longest, the 198 yard, 7th.  All have a safe shot to the middle of the green, but again for match play with the greens tucked away in front of water, bunkers and ravines, it creates a perfect match play scenario.  That will be the key to the course, it’s perfect for match play.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the WGC-Dell 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 9 Dell rookies (Kevin Chappell, Tyrrell Hatton, William McGirt, Jon Rahm, Brendan Steele, Hideto Tanihara, Jhonattan Vegas, Jeunghun Wang and SiWoo Kim) have just as much of a chance as Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson or Hideki Matsuyama.  Just look at what happened in 2014, Jordan Spieth made it to the quarter-finals while Victor Dubuisson made it to the finals.  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 2013 when Charles Howell III beat him on Wednesday.  So don’t think that just because Dustin Johnson, who was the number one draw is a better player than the 64th draw SiWoo Kim.  When you see some pairings of a superstar against a lesser name player like K.T. Kim or Joost Luitten on paper the match looks like David verses Goliath.  We all know what happened in that story it’s happened before and will happen in years to come.

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

• We have very limited history of players at Austin Country Club.  Now Jordan Spieth has played the course more than anybody else but Jason Dufner and Jimmy Walker have also played it.  Both have played it for years and have played it in all kinds of weather so they know the extreme of it.  So everyone starts with a clean slate on Wednesday with nobody having a home field advantage like Ian Poulter, Matt Kuchar, Nick Watney, Bubba Watson and Hunter Mahan had at Dove Mountain for all those years.
• 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 around 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.
• This is also a different format.  Just because you lose that first round match on the 20th hole doesn’t mean like previous years that you were on a plane home that night.  You still have two more matches and could all of a sudden find your game and find yourselve winning your group.  So it’s really important to take each match at one time and not worry if your playing poorly early.  A prefect example of this was last year when Dustin Johnson lost his first round match to Robert Streb but was still able to win his group and going onto the quarterfinals before losing to Louis Oosthuizen.  Even bigger was Rafael Cabrera-Bello (who finished 3rd) and Rory McIlroy (who finished 4th) in group play they halved a match and still made it to the weekend.
• So anything can happen in this format.
• 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 Phil Mickelson know how to win in this format so they have a bit of an advantage. Also look at how strong Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia have been in the Ryder Cup. Those that have won other match play events like Paul Casey and Kiradech Aphibarnrat who won the Paul Lawrie Match Play on the European Tour, 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 Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson and Patrick Reed.  Also players that have been doing well of late like Dustin Johnson, Kevin Kisner and Tommy Fleetwood should do well this week.
• In the past the most difficult place to pick winners was the first round.  You were a superstar if you picked half of them right.  Now the first round means nothing, so look for more marquee players dominating the first three days and getting into the round of 16 on Saturday morning.  Again seeds mean nothing anymore.

Some secrets to playing at Austin Country Club:

• Austin Country Club is perfect for match play because the course isn’t long, it’s not very tight and the greens are generous.  But with all of the changes there are a lot of bunkers in the fairways that will catch wayward drives.  Making the bunkers hard, they are deep and could be impossible to get to the green.  Also lot’s of hazards to avoid and you will see a lot of them if you are going for a tight pin position.  In some ways hitting first to the green you control what your opponent will do based on your shot.  If you can put pressure on him he will lose holes.  But if you don’t hit the perfect shot and get yourself in trouble, it makes it easy for your opponent to hit the middle of the green and make par to win the hole.
• Weather will also play a key.  It’s been very wet the last couple of weeks in Texas, so the course could be soft and easy.  In looking at the long range forecast is dry Wednesday and Thursday, but Friday is suppose to be a mess with 90% chance of thunderstorms.  The good news after that is clear skies on Saturday and Sunday. Wind will be a problem on Thursday, forecast calls for 19 mph, but again check back closer to the day. Again you create your own storyline in this format, you can control your own destiny in tough weather.  Let the other player make the mistakes, not you.
• Greens have a lot of undulations which Harding Park didn’t have.  Good putters and scramblers will help a player savage his match.
• Driving will be a key.  Just like at Augusta National, you have to place a drive in a good spot to have a good shot to the green.  The length is short, but if you don’t place your drives in the right spot it will be hard to get close on your shot to the green.  So a straight driver will have an advantage over a long hitter this week.