Accenture Match Play Championship

The Accenture Match Play Tournament started Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain in Marana, Arizona, northwest of Tucson. We are having Chamber of Commerce weather for the tournament with high temperatures in the mid-70s and clear blue skies with little wind. The golf course is a Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course that opened in January 2009. The course is 7,833 yards and the 3,000 foot elevation is not going to shorten it by much. There are eight par-4 holes over 450 yards and all of the par-5 holes are over 575 yards, but the three hardest holes are par-3s!

The first day of match play is one of the most exciting days in any tournament. There are 32 individual championships and the players are so evenly matched that the number 1 player probably beats the number 64 player 6 out of 10 times. Wednesday was one of those four times when the number 64 seed, Ross McGowan, beat the number 1 seed, Steve Stricker (by the end of the second day of the tournament the number one seed in each of the four brackets lost). The lower seeds won 12 of the 36 matches played on Wednesday. The downside with match play is that if you have one mediocre round or your opponent has one great round, you are out of the tournament. You do not have three other rounds to make up for one poor score.

By the end of the day Thursday, not only were the four number 1 seeds, Stricker, Kaymer, Westwood and Furyk, out of the tournament, but Rory McIlroy, Padraig Harrington, Geoff Ogilvy and Anthony Kim were also finished. For television purposes, the remaining big-names are Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen, Paul Casey (an ASU boy) and Camilio Villegas, all Europeans! Stewart Cink, Mr. Personality, is the highest ranking American remaining in the field. Tiger and Phil both chose to sit this one out.

Of course, tomorrow morning we will all be glued to the video feed of Tiger Woods' non-news conference that is being choreographed like a Martin Scorsese movie. He will be speaking from a script to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates. A hand-picked press pool will be invited. He will not be taking any questions. The London bookies are taking bets on the number of times he says "sorry", "family", "apologise" (the English spelling), and whether he will mention any of these words: "ashamed", "Nike", "car", "addiction", "demons", "retirement", "gambling" or "sex". It will be like a drinking game!