Kids Are Just All Right, Garcia Is a Bit Better

Those weren’t bunkers, those were sandboxes, which could mean only one thing. Yes, it was Kids Day at the Accenture Match Play Championship, where 22-year-old Sergio Garcia stared straight into the eyes of 22-year-old Charles Howell III and managed to defeat his elder of seven months.

Milk and cookies all around.

The precocious Garcia is full of swagger, and as we have come to know, also very full of waggle, but he’s definitely a load at this match-play business. Garcia’s pre-shot routine may be to grip and regrip as if he is wringing out a pair of socks, but you have to say it’s downright effective.

“I mean, to win these kinds of tournaments, you have to play well, but you have to be a little lucky,” Garcia said.

It didn’t even matter that Garcia’s victory march on the back nine Thursday amounted to one birdie, three bogeys, five pars and a few dozen regrips. No, what mattered was that Garcia pulled out a 1-up victory over Howell on another day of so-called upsets at the $5.5-million crapshoot at La Costa.

After two days, only four of the top-20 ranked players are still around with fourth-seeded Garcia chief among them. The others are sixth-seeded David Toms, 14th-seeded Jim Furyk and 17th-seeded Bob Estes.

Meanwhile, busy making their travel plans by sundown were No. 5 Ernie Els, No. 7 Retief Goosen, No. 8 Davis Love III, No. 9 Vijay Singh and No. 10 Chris DiMarco.

Toms didn’t exactly take the easy way out in his match against Rocco Mediate, holding on for a 1-up decision. But the fact that he’s still around while a bunch of other guys ranked in the top 10 aren’t, well, Toms says that’s not so surprising.

“It’s just guys are so even,” he said. “Obviously, you have a handful of really top players, but if they are a little bit off, they are gone.”

Still around are Tom Lehman, who posted a 1-up victory over Els, and Jose Maria Olazabal, who birdied the last hole for a 1-up victory over Retief Goosen. Paul Azinger had a big lead, but struggled to get past Love, 1-up. Azinger will play Niclas Fasth, who ousted Singh, 3 and 2. Factor in Mark Calcavecchia’s 2-and-1 victory over DiMarco and you can see that the shelf is all but bare of top-10 players.

Chances are there will be many additional opportunities for Garcia and Howell to run into each other on the golf course, so it would probably be a good idea not to make too much of their first match-play competition. Neither played that great--Howell had five birdies and five bogeys and Garcia had three birdies and three bogeys--but that’s not why they drew the largest gallery of the day

It was expected to be great theater, or at least a preview of great theater, and there is no rain check for the fact that it didn’t really work out that way. Howell was too busy trying to steer his ball straight instead of bouncing it off trees or hitting it off cart paths as he spent too much time doing.

The notion that their matchup might be of fairly high interest to the golfing public clearly was not lost on Howell.

“Well, I just lost, so it’s hard for me to say, but it definitely was fun,” Howell said.

“We both [understood]. We both wanted to beat each other. The thing is, neither one of us played our best. It was just one of those things.”

Howell said he didn’t even mind the number of grips and regrips he noticed in Garcia’s pre-shot routine.

“It’s his little thing, I guess,” Howell said. “I certainly wasn’t surprised by it. I counted a few, just for fun.”

Next for Toms is Steve Flesch, but the PGA champion said he didn’t think much of his victory over Mediate because neither played very well.

“I guess you would call it a pillow fight,” Toms said. “It didn’t look like either one of us wanted to win.”

Olazabal and Calcavecchia meet today with the winner facing either John Cook or Brad Faxon. The Toms-Flesch winner would play either Kevin Sutherland or Furyk. Lehman will play Matt Gogel today and the winner draws either Garcia or Scott McCarron. The Azinger-Fasth winner meets either Estes or Nick Price.

Garcia allowed himself a moment to assess his chances with only 16 players left out of the original 64.

“You know, the big guys aren’t there, but you’ve still got to realize that all of the other guys who are playing and [the players] who beat the big guys, they are all good players. And they beat them playing well.”

All right, big guys gone. Players who beat big guys good. Players playing well ... looks like everything’s in order for another day of upsets.