Playing With Matches Gets the Top Players Burned

Choose one: Match-play golf is great because it’s so unpredictable. Match-play golf stinks because it’s so unpredictable.

Of course, they’re both true, which is why after two days of the Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship, the only player in the top 10 who’s still here in the land of herbal wraps and aromatherapy is Tiger Woods.

“Am I really?” he said. “Wow.”

Now, here’s a real wow for you. The best final matchup this $5-million tournament can hope for is No. 1 Woods against No. 27 John Huston. And that’s sure to heat up the TV ratings like a big old furnace, isn’t it?

Bob Tway played Woods almost even in their second-round match Thursday at La Costa, but Woods managed to escape with a 1-up victory when Tway’s 10-foot birdie putt to even the match at No. 18 rolled left by less than an inch.

“To be able to survive a match like this and to get through to the next round, I am relieved, no doubt about it,” Woods said.

Actually, any sense of relief was in short supply again for golf’s best players, who spent another trying day at the office. It’s almost as if somebody picked up the entire official world ranking system, shook it hard, then turned the whole thing upside down.

There are only three players in the top 20 still in--Woods, No. 12 Phil Mickelson and No. 13 Fred Couples.

Meanwhile, six of the lowest-ranked 16 are still in. Go figure. Well, in deep matters such as these, it’s always a good idea to check in with Couples.

Couples defeated Scott Hoch, 1-up, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it very much.

“I don’t even know who I play tomorrow, but this stuff makes me so nervous I’ll be choking like a dog,” Couples said.

Woof, Fred, and it’s Steve Pate, by the way.

The players reminded everyone that the numbers don’t add up.

On Wednesday, 12 of the top 20 players in the world ranking lost. On Thursday, five of the eight still left lost.

Included in that group was No. 2 David Duval, who bogeyed two of the last five holes in his match with Bill Glasson and lost, 2 and 1.

“I was lucky,” Glasson said.

It was a good day to be lucky, then. In other noteworthy matches, Jeff Maggert said goodbye to No. 9 Nick Price, 1-up; Shigeki Maruyama trounced No. 10 Justin Leonard, 4 and 2, and Greg Norman lost to Eduardo Romero in 21 holes.

Norman was 3-up through 12 but bogeyed Nos. 16 and 17 to allow Romero a chance. The portly Argentine hit a seven-iron to one foot on No. 18 and forced extra holes.

Norman drove out of bounds on the 20th hole, but Romero missed his par putt and the match went on to the 21st hole, where Romero sank a 25-foot putt for birdie to end it.

Said Norman: “The shot he made at 18 was as good as any I have seen.”

Any? Better than Larry Mize at the 1987 Masters, or Bob Tway at the 1986 PGA?

Anyway, Romero was happy to be moving on to the next round and an encounter with Mickelson.

“It is match play, you never know,” Romero said. “It is golf, it is a game. I play good. I don’t know.”

Hey, nobody knows much around here any more. Well, maybe one guy. Maruyama has Michael Jordan’s No. 23 on his bag because he was 23 when he turned pro and, well, he thinks Jordan is cool.

Two years ago, Maruyama visited Jordan’s store in Chicago.

“That is one of the most happiest times I have ever had,” Maruyama said. “I bought my shoes and clothing and I ate cheeseburger there and it was delicious.”

Maruyama will play Loren Roberts in the third round. Roberts defeated Paul Azinger, 2 and 1. Roberts was 1-up at No. 15 when his tee shot bounced off the leg of a spectator back onto the fairway. That spectator was Kimberly Roberts, his wife.

“She took one for the team,” Roberts said.

Mickelson said he’s as surprised as anybody about the upsets.

“We knew there were going to be top seeds that lost, but we didn’t expect 90% of them to lose, you know,” he said.

So it’s up to Woods to keep it going. The format calls for eight matches in the morning and four more in the afternoon to cut the field to four players by tonight.

Woods said he’s not worrying about anything except his morning match with Stewart Cink. If Woods wins, he would meet the winner of the Bernhard Langer-Jeff Maggert match in the afternoon.

Woods knows the stakes.

“You got to go out there and give it everything you have in the morning and hopefully come out on top,” he said. “Because if you don’t, you probably won’t come out on top.”

Got it. If you do, you will and if you don’t, you won’t. That match play does something to your reasoning skills, all right.