The Accenture Match Play tournament started today in Tucson. This tournament has a much different format than the others on the tour. The top 64 players in the world, based on the Official World Golf Ratings, start on the first day. They play in pairs. One player in each pair will win the first round. Thursday the 32 winners from today will pair up and play a round. The 16 winners in that round move onto Friday. The 8 winners on Friday play Saturday morning. The winners Saturday morning play Saturday afternoon. So by the time Sunday rolls around they are down to the final 2.
This is a 'Match Play' tournament. This means the winner of each round is not determined by who had the lowest number of strokes, but by who won the most holes. Whole different scoring system. Which, as usual when it comes to this technical stuff, I would rather not explain. So once again I turn to my local expert, The Golfer:
In its simplest form Match Play is a contest of Player A vs. Player B. During a match each hole has 1 point. If you have the best score ( lowest number of strokes ) you win the hole. In stroke play( also called 'medal play' ) you add up all your strokes for the round and lowest score wins. In match play you add up the number of holes you have won. Highest number wins. Your stroke total doesn't matter.
Golf traditionally was Match Play. The British Open, The US Open and The Masters were stroke play, but most other tournaments, particularly Amateur tournaments, were match play. I would prefer to play a match tournament, as would most Golfers out there. One bad hole doesn't screw up your round, and since you are playing your opponent you know exactly where you stand, instead of playing the field where someone 5 holes behind you is shooting lights out, and you don't know he's 3 strokes ahead of you. Stroke play is more player vs. course. Match play is much more player vs. player. For those of us that play golf it's the closest to a fight we will ever get. When you are playing a match you face your opponent. You know exactly what you have to do to win. More pressure, more fun!
At my home course the 17th hole is about 190 yard par 3, all carry over water( Pete Dye design, railroad laughing at anything that is 6 inches short, for you Golfers out there. ). Imagine a match where you are 1 down going into this hole. Your opponent is up first and puts it on the green about 15 feet from the hole. Whadda ya gonna do? You have to put aside your fear of the water, and fire right at the pin. If you plunk it in the water you are dead, you lose the hole, match over. If you play it safe and bail to the left you have an impossible up and down, and he has a 2 putt for par. Even if you fire for the middle of the green hoping for par, he only has a 15 footers for a birdie to close out the match. Your opponent gives you a big grin and saunters off the tee box. Nothing you can do but step up, fire away, and hope for the best. Twice in the last 3 years I have had this happen to me. First time, flared this weak little goober into the drink and had the long trudge back to the clubhouse. Second time, I fired it to within 3 feet of the hole, and gave him the grin right back. Ah the joys of match play!
In 1958 the PGA Championship switched from match play to stroke play and almost all tournaments since then are stroke play. Why the change? As usual - TV. In match play, once you are 'up' more holes than there are holes left to play the round is over. So if you are up by 3 holes and there are only 2 holes left to play, that means even if your opponent wins the remaining holes, you will still win the round. At that point play stops. You don't play the remaining holes. That means the interesting stuff could be over while TV still has 2 hours to fill. There is also the 'any given Sunday' factor. There have always been fan favorites, and these are usually the best players. If these players made it to the final the TV audience was large. But every golfer has bad days, and if the best players had a bad day and were sent packing after the first round, and some no-names made it to the final, the TV audience watched something else. With stroke play there is a much better chance that the best players, the ones people want to watch, will still be playing on Sunday.
Here are some terms used in Match Play:
UP: Number of holes you are ahead. So if you have played 4 holes and you won 2 and your opponent won 1 and you tied one, you are 1 up.
DOWN: The opposite of UP.
HALF: When both players have the same number of strokes on a hole they have 'halved' the hole. In most amateur events you have strokes to give and take because of handicaps. But pros don't have handicaps so they don't give strokes. For match scoring purposes you just throw away the 'halfs'.
DORMY: A great term that says you are UP the exact number of holes left to play. This generally only applies in team events (i.e. the Ryder Cup. ed note: We'll get to the Ryder Cup in a later post.) where each match counts for 1 point for the team. Otherwise, if you are tied after 18 holes you keep playing until someone wins a hole. BTW: While it might be tempting to call this sudden death, DON'T! For this week's tournament there will be no dormy, someone has to win and someone has to pack their bags.
The only thing I will add to this is, the tour has moved into Arizona now, and TV coverage moves over to NBC for the next month or so. Which means no David Feherty/Nick Faldo, and lots of Johnny Miller. Which can provide a certain amount of entertainment if you are a Golfer and get his general snarkiness. If not you may feel like things have gone from John Stewart to Bill O'Reilly. But it is still interesting tournament watching.
