While sports fans in the United States are engaged in College Basketball\’s NCAA Tournament, golf has a March Madness version of 64-entries in a survive and advance, bracketed format, tournament of its own. It is The WGC Match Play which begins on Wednesday at Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas.
With The US Masters being just two weeks away, the field is without four of the top names in the game. Henrik Stenson, Adam Scott, Justin Rose, and Rickie Fowler, have decided to skip The Dell Match Play. Adam Hadwin, a winner just two weeks ago in Florida, is also missing the event due to his upcoming wedding conflicting with the dates. This scheduling is certainly an issue and you can bet The PGA Tour will make an adjustment when they are able to prior to the 2019 season.
After being held at a handful of different locations for more than a decade, for the second straight year, The Match Play Championship returns to Austin Country Club. Match play is not common on any of the world golf tours but it is a lovely format that we do get to enjoy every year with The Ryder Cup, President\’s Cup, and Paul Lawrie\’s Match Play event on The European Tour. For the WGC Match Play, the players are seeded in four separate regions, with 16-golfers positioned in each region and further broken down into 4-pools within each region. The four golfers in a pool will play a round-robin format over the first three days of the tournament. The player emerging from each pool with the most points of the four players in the group advances into the round of sixteen. From here, the tournament becomes single elimination with both the semifinal and final matches taking place on Sunday.
The golf course is relatively short at right around 7100-yards. It is a Par 71, Pete Dye design. Every 5 Par is reachable in two shots and there is one drivable 4 Par. The fairways are somewhat narrow, bordered by trees and the river that runs throughout the course. The Bermuda Grass greens, overseeded with Bent, feature undulation and the sand bunkers are fairly deep. It all adds up to a course that has a lot of risk-reward scenarios, which is ideal for a match play format. Different from a stroke play event, where the players are playing one tournament over the course of four days, The WGC Match Play offers a number of betting opportunities with new, individual match ups every day and even within the same day. While it too is just one tournament, it is as if there are multiple head-to-head tournaments going on between two players throughout the event, again making for a very exciting watch from day to day, hole to hole, and shot to shot.
Market Leaders
Rory McIlroy (7.920 Pinnacle) As the Match Play defending champion a year ago, McIlroy was beaten by eventual champion, Jason Day in a semi-final match. I would be surprised if he does not make it at least this far again this year as he is excellent in match play and has been playing extremely well as of late with a 7th in Mexico and a 4th last week at Bay Hill.
Dustin Johnson (10.180 Pinnacle) Match play is not the world number one\’s specialty despite a 3-and-0 mark in Ryder Cup singles competition. Johnson is definitely a bomber and this is not necessarily a bombers course but.. his putting and scrambling have improved tremendously in the last year.
Jordan Spieth (10.390 in several green listed bookmakers) The Texas native has played this golf course quite a bit and that advantage showed last year when he easily advanced into the round of 16. He leads The PGA Tour in Greens in Regulation but is 0-and-2 in Ryder Cup singles play.
Second Favourites
Jason Day (16.360 Pinnacle) Day is the defending champion, winning at this same course last season and winning again two years prior at Dove Mountain in Tucson, Arizona. His battles with illness and injury remain a concern and this is a lot of golf to play this week with at least seven rounds to be logged by the eventual finalists.
Patrick Reed (+3754 Bookmaker) Reed\’s game has been pretty shaky in 2017 but he has shown in Ryder Cup and President\’s Cup play, that he is a match play stalwart. His putting is still excellent but his scrambling has dipped significantly.
Paul Casey (+3400 5Dimes) Casey is another magic match play player with an overall record of 20-12-and-1 at WGC Match Play events and two 2nd place finishes. He\’s in good form too with five Top-25 finishes on The PGA Tour this season.
Long Shots
Rafa Cabrera-Bello (+6000 5Dimes) Cabrera-Bello has been playing very well this season, is 6-3-and-1 overall at The WGC Match Play, finishing 3rd here last year in his debut, and is a perfect 1-and-0 in Ryder Cup singles competition.
Gary Woodland (66.740 Pinnacle) Woodland finished 2nd to Rory McIlroy in 2015 when this event was held at Harding Park in San Francisco. He\’s been playing excellent golf this season with four Top-10 finishes since November.
Ryan Moore (+8500 5Dimes) Moore was the hero for The United States at The Ryder Cup last Fall, winning his match on Sunday to win the cup for the U.S. side. His record is very average at this event overall but likes the new venue, finishing 5th here in Austin last year.
Selection
Tyrrell Hatton (+3002 Bookmaker) The Englishman has been playing some cracking golf indeed since winning The Dunhill Links in October. He is a debutante at The WGC Match Play but has not finished worse than 13th in his last six starts worldwide. He comes in off of three straight Top-10\’s on The PGA Tour and leads such in Strokes Gained Putting. When it comes to match play, I like a strong short game, and Hatton currently owns one of the best in the world.
Calculators
