Match Play Still Earning Its Place

If you go by money alone, the four-year-old Accenture Match Play Championship is among the top events in the world. It offers $5.5 million in prize money, more than any tournament in the world other than the Masters, the Players Championship and the Tour Championship, which have $6 million purses.

If you go by reputation and stature, let’s just say we’ve got a slight cachet problem here.

The top-ranked players in the world are playing for $5.5 million, beginning today at La Costa. A terrific event. So who is the defending champion?

Exactly.

The answer is Steve Stricker, whose hard-earned victory last year in Australia ended his five-year winless streak.

No matter how great a victory it was for Stricker, it will be noted that he did it against a short field because many of the top-ranked players didn’t want to start their year the first week of January in South Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia.

It certainly wasn’t the fault of Stricker, who was ranked 90th, that the highest-ranking U.S. player who did show up was Hal Sutton, ranked eighth.

“I really don’t feel like a defending champion since we are a long ways away from where we were last year,” Stricker said.

In the meantime, the Match Play Championship is proving that even if you cannot buy tradition, you may at least be able to afford a down payment. This would be a critical year in the evolution of the big-money tournament if a new deal wasn’t already in the works. This is the last year of Accenture’s contract as title sponsor. A new four-year contract is expected to be announced Sunday.

The match play event is part of a four-tournament World Golf Championship series governed by the International Federation of PGA Tours--the PGA Tour, the European Tour, the Asian PGA, the Southern Africa Tour, the PGA Australasia Tour and the Japan Golf Tour. The total prize money for all four events is $19.5 million.

All business news aside, the real barometer of whether the Match Play is a success is whether the players support it. They’re certainly lining up behind it this week, with 62 of the top 64 players in the world rankings at La Costa. The only ones missing are Jose Coceres, who broke his arm playing soccer, and Thomas Bjorn, who didn’t want to travel.

Everybody else is here, including Tiger Woods, who meets Peter O’Malley of Australia in a first-round match and would face Nick Price or Angel Cabrera in the second round. Woods says he is a fan of the match play format.

“You’ve got to play each moment,” he said. “That’s the cool thing about match play. You don’t just worry about your game, you’ve got to worry about what your opponent is doing, the golf course, the conditions. It’s a neat feeling because we don’t get a chance to do that as often as we would like.”

The last time the match play event was at La Costa, Darren Clarke defeated Woods in a 36-hole final, 4-and-3. Clarke, who missed the cut last week at the Nissan Open, says he is playing well enough, but that he isn’t having much luck on the greens.

Clarke said his last visit to La Costa was a relaxed week for him.

“Just walking around without a care in the world,” he said. “Walked around, smoking a cigar and having a nice time on the golf course and that was it. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t trying, I just didn’t feel like I was.”

Clarke’s first-round opponent is Matt Gogel, who won at Pebble Beach three weeks ago.

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World Match Play Championship

When: Today-Sunday

Where: La Costa Resort and Spa, Carlsbad

TV: Today-Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., ESPN; Saturday, 7:30--11 a.m., ESPN; 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Ch. 7; Sunday,

11 a.m.-3 p.m., Ch. 7