Pod-Based WGC-Match Play Continues as Wrong Kind of March Madness
Imagine if the NCAA ran its bracket-busting basketball tournament like this week’s World Golf Championships-Dell Technnologies Match Play …
Announcer: “There it is, Saint Peter’s has pulled off the impossible in overtime! It has defeated the mighty Kentucky Wildcats! What a dagger, this is the upset of the tournament!
“Now the Wildcats have to play the University of San Francisco and hope that Saint Peter’s stumbles against Murray State. As every fan knows, the eventual winner of this four-team pod grouping advances to the Sweet Sixteen. Saint Peter’s and Murray State have the upper hand, each are 1-0. So the Wildcats will have to play hard because in this tournament, it’s one-and-you’re-not-done-yet!”
A small correction on that tournament title — make it the World Buzzkill Championship. The 64 golfers who tee it up at Austin Country Club know they won’t head home if they lose their first match. They’ll get two more chances to win and possibly advance.
The format change at the Dell Technologies Match Play seven years ago remains the golf crime of the century. This was once the most entertaining event on the PGA Tour that wasn’t a major championship or The Players.
It had drama similar to the NCAA basketball tournament. The Match Play was win or go home. There were heroic clutch shots, epic blunders, hard feelings (yeah, match play always gets personal, that’s part of why it’s so fun), upsets, assorted controversies, buzzer-beater-type shots and Wednesday night departures. The Match Play had it all.
Except reality kept intruding. Match play is golf’s most entertaining format but also a poor way to determine a champion. Instead of having to beat an entire field in stroke play, the winner has to beat only six other players one at a time and too often, Tiger Woods, the game’s best player, wasn’t among them. Back in the first part of the 2000s, the road to victory usually had to go through Woods.
Anything can happen in 18 holes. It’s too short a time for the better player to necessarily separate himself, unlike 72 holes of stroke play. Thus, the Dell Technologies Match Play often becomes the golf equivalent of Saint Peter's over Kentucky.
You can look it up. There was Nick O’Hern over Tiger Woods — twice! — in the Match Play. Nick Who? Exactly. There was Peter O’Malley, no relation to Nick Who, knocking off Woods in a stunner. There was Tim Clark stopping Woods in a second-round match in 2009. There was Darren Clarke outplaying Woods in a 36-hole finale at La Costa, one of Clarke’s finest achievements.
Woods won the Match Play three times, to the delight of of many, but his early exits frustrated television execs and disappointed fans. So in 2015, the event’s format was changed to round-robin play within four-man pods. That way, all 64 players, especially the marquee names — mainly Woods and Phil Mickelson — were guaranteed to play least three matches and still be on the grounds through Friday.
The concept was logical. But the decision added clutter. The event went from 64 matches over five days to 112 matches. It also led to a handful of Friday matches between guys playing dead with no chance to advance.
The players always felt that pressure and element of danger when the format was one-and-done. Ernie Els, who never seemed to produce his best golf at La Costa, used to leave his suitcase packed in his hotel room in case he lost early and needed to make a quick getaway. Which he often did.
The dream that the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the world would square off in the Match Play’s championship final never happened and never came close. But we did get Steve Stricker versus Pierre Fulke once and Kevin Sutherland and Scott McCarron another time.
In his three victories, Woods won finals over David Toms, Davis Love and Stewart Cink. We never got Woods versus Mickelson, the marquee bout everyone wanted to see. Or Woods versus David Duval or Woods versus Els.
Has the pod format been any more successful at delivering the best/most appealing players in the world to the final? Marginally. Rory McIlroy was No. 1 when he defeated Gary Woodland in the 2015 final. Jason Day took over the No. 1 ranking from Jordan Spieth when he beat Louis Oosthuizen in 2016. Dustin Johnson was No. 1 when he topped Jon Rahm in the 2017 final. However, the last three Match Play champions were Bubba Watson, Kevin Kisner and Billy Horschel. All very good players, but all 64 players in this field are very good players.
The only way the top two players might face off in the final is if the tedious three-day, 96-match undercard was eliminated. Invite just the top 16 players in the world rankings and go from there. But 16 players isn’t a tournament, it’s a sideshow. It’s not even a decent-sized golf outing.
The round-robin schedule and the pods have to go. The PGA Tour players are big boys, they can deal with flying to Texas and going home Wednesday night if they lose. They will be well-paid for one day of golf. Last year, players who went 0-3 in pod play took home last-place money of $35,750. Raise your hand if you’d turn up your nose on $35k. Yeah, didn’t think so.
The Match Play’s original brackets were simple to understand and equitable. They also yielded memorable moments.
In 2006, No. 64 Thomas Bjorn withdrew. That meant a first-round matchup between his replacement, Stephen Ames, and the No. 1 player, Woods. A few years earlier, Ames had made some disparaging comments about Woods. Asked about those at the time, Woods said, “Who’s Stephen Ames?”
Once he got in the Match Play field after Bjorn’s departure, Ames was asked about facing the world’s top player. Anything can happen, Ames said, “especially the way he (Tiger) is driving it.”
What came next was arguably the Match Play’s finest hour. Woods, who was notorious for holding a grudge over the smallest slight, crushed Ames, 9 and 8. Woods birdied the first six holes and won every hole on the front nine. Ames bogeyed the two holes Woods parred. “What are the chances of that happening?” Woods said later with a not-so-subtle dig.
What about Ames’ pre-tournament comments? Woods answered, “Nine and eight.”
Did you have any extra motivation because of those comments? Woods answered again, “Nine and eight.”
Point made.
The PGA Tour doesn’t get a lot wrong in the marketing department. Not counting the World Golf Hall of Fame, the original dizzying FedEx Cup points system and the failed attempt to stop Casey Martin from riding in cart.
The Dell Technologies Match Play format is wrong. It’s time to get back to basics — single-elimination play and simple seedings, 1 versus 64, 2 versus 63 and so on.
You may remember how it worked in 1999 in the original Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship. Jeff Maggert beat Andrew Magee by chipping in on the 38th hole for the big-money $1 million first prize. It was riveting golf if you could get past the fact that the public wasn’t terribly familiar with either player.
Magee was asked about the lack of marquee names in that final. “Tough s---,” he quipped, and laughed.
The golf and the innate draw of match play has always been good enough to stand on its own. It’s compelling because every hole has an outcome — win, lose or draw. The game is different in 2022, however. Woods and Mickelson don’t overshadow golf the way they did two decades ago. Who’s the giant superstar whose first-round loss would ruin the tournament and kill the public’s interest in watching? Bryson DeChambeau? Jon Rahm? Scottie Scheffler?
The Match Play would be just fine without him, whoever he is.
Bring back single elimination. We won’t have to hear the word “pod” and we won’t be buried under 32 matches a day for three straight days. Nobody wants that much golf.
Stack up the old one-and-done format against the current Match Play robin-robin format and one-and-done is the clear winner.
The score? Nine and eight.