Format in Spotlight in Desert : Golf: Diners Club event at PGA West gives players a rare opportunity for match play.

With a format so unusual it is used in big-time golf only three times a year, the only non-international match-play event of 1994 began Thursday at the Nicklaus Resort Course at PGA West.

Match play, in which players win individual holes and add them up to see who has won the most, is almost as rare as a double eagle.

The Diners Club Matches at PGA West are new to the PGA Tour calendar and constitute the only match-play event in the United States this year other than the biannual Presidents Cup, which also began this year.

Throw in the Ryder Cup, which is played the years the Presidents Cup is not, and the World Match Play Championships on the European Tour and you have the extent of match play.

Teams from the Senior PGA Tour and the LPGA tour will join the PGA players today. The winning teams will earn $125,000 each of the $2.1-million total purse.

Match play is a popular format for the players, if not necessarily spectators.

“Every hole is like playing the 18th hole to win a tournament,” Lee Janzen said. “It’s like it’s always sudden death.”

On the other hand, match play may be sudden death to golf’s most important partner, television.

“It doesn’t work for TV,” Rick Fehr said. “The tournament opens with Nicklaus and Palmer, but will you see them on Sunday? They’re two big draws and it would hurt to lose them.

“I think that’s what makes the senior tour so successful. They have no cut.”

The PGA Championship used match play from its inception in 1916 until 1958, when it was changed to stroke play.

The PGA Tour hasn’t had a match-play event since 1986. The Seiko Tucson Match Play Championships lasted three years.

But at the very least, any match play can’t hurt as preparation for the Ryder Cup, said Janzen, who was on the 1993 team.

“I know it’s going to help,” he said. “It’s different strategy out there. It doesn’t matter how many holes you have won before, you’ve got to win the hole you’re on now.”

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Nicklaus and Palmer, who open the Senior PGA Tour play today against Simon Hobday and Tom Weiskopf, are celebrating a reunion.

It’s the first time they have played together since the 1973 Ryder Cup. Their match-play record is 2-1.

“We lost to somebody?” Palmer joked.

Maurice Bembridge and Brian Hugget defeated Nicklaus and Palmer, 3 and 1, in a four-ball in the 1973 Ryder Cup.

The PGA Tour players began match play Thursday and not a moment too soon for Scott Hoch, who chipped in from 20 feet on No. 18 to win with partner Chip Beck. Hoch had also chipped in on No. 16 to tie the match against Mike Springer and Neal Lancaster.

Said Hoch: “What all this means is, we were real lucky.”

Hoch and Beck will play Janzen and Rocco Mediate, who defeated Lanny Wadkins and Paul Azinger, 4 and 2.

Phil Mickelson and Ben Crenshaw were ahead by a hole with one to play, but both hit balls into the water on No. 18 and fell into a tie with John Huston and Brian Claar, who won on the 19th hole.

Huston and Claar will play Fuzzy Zoeller and Curtis Strange, who defeated Ronnie Black and Brad Bryant, 3 and 2.

Other winners were the teams of Rick Fehr-Loren Roberts, Hale Irwin-Jay Haas, Bill Glasson-David Edwards and Jeff Maggert-Jim McGovern.