It’s Match Point for Love, Woods

On another long day at La Costa, Davis Love III played XXI holes to get past Darren Clarke and then resisted the chance to throw his cap into the rivalry ring as the next-in-line foil for Tiger Woods.

“It’s match play, it’s one week,” Love said. “If I beat him, it’s not like he’s going to quit and not play the Masters.”

Fair enough, but there seems to be more at stake than the $1.2-million winner’s share in today’s 36-hole final of the Accenture Match Play Championship. Not only is it a showdown between Woods, the undisputed top player in the world, and the No. 5-ranked Love, it is also a chance to see how Love stacks up against the only measuring stick that counts, only eight weeks into the season and the Masters only six weeks away.

Coming off a four-victory season and a chance to beat Woods to the line and win before he does this year, Love said he has known all week what could be in store for him.

“It’s like Duke coming out of the East. You know you’re going to see him in the final game.”

And who is Love?

“I’m North Carolina with a lot of talent. And the lower ranking.”

Woods did his part to make the date when he birdied the last two holes to defeat Stephen Leaney, 2 and 1, only hours after he defeated Padraig Harrington by the same score in Saturday morning’s quarterfinals.

“Hopefully, I can play as well as I have been in the last couple of days and take it to him,” Woods said of Love.

Never trailing in his last 64 holes, Woods has won five times so far and is 19-3 in this event, a fact that was pointed out to Love.

“It’s not surprising,” he said. “But it is incredible.”

That’s a fair assessment of Love’s come-from-behind victory over Clarke, who led by two holes with two to go. After he bogeyed the 16th hole when he missed a six-foot putt, Love did a quick survey of his predicament and didn’t come up with anything very positive.

“I felt like the match was really over,” he said. “Two down with two to go is not where you want to be.”

But neither was Clarke after his tee shot at the 17th bounced off a cart path behind a tree in the rough. Clarke made bogey, and Love was still in it. At the 18th, Love had 259 yards to the front of the green for his second shot, so he went for it with a three-wood. The ball landed 29 feet from the pin, and Love putted two feet for a conceded birdie.

Love is the only player in the event to successfully reach the 18th green in two shots.

Clarke, who laid up, could have ended it by making a 10-foot putt, but he missed it and the match went to extra holes. It ended on the third playoff hole, when Love rolled in a nine-footer for birdie.

Clarke defeated Woods in the 2000 match play final and said he was disappointed in not having another opportunity, but he believes he was fortunate to advance as far as he did because he was grinding more than he would have liked.

He didn’t seem to be grinding a great deal in his morning match against a determined Jerry Kelly, who had defeated Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh to get there. Clarke prevailed, 5 and 3, to set up his showdown with Love, who went to the last hole in the morning before he pulled out a 1-up victory over Phil Mickelson.

After Mickelson birdied the 17th hole, he pulled even with Love, but it took him two shots to get into trouble on the 558-yard par-five closing hole.

Because his previous three matches were over quickly, it was the first time Mickelson played the 18th hole this week.

Mickelson was 254 yards from the front of the green and chose a three-wood to try to reach it. He didn’t.

Instead, Mickelson’s ball sailed about 30 yards to the right of the green, across a cart path and into the rough with a bunker between him and the hole. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mickelson had to chip the ball over a tree, but when he tried it, the top branches appeared to catch the ball and it dropped into the rough, short of the bunker.

Nevertheless, Love said it was the correct play for Mickelson to try for the green.

“You don’t want to lay up and hit a wedge ... hit it up there and the ball spins back off the green,” he said.

Love was on the fringe of the green in three, making a nice recovery after driving into the rough. He watched Mickelson’s chip roll 23 feet past the hole. From 31 feet, Love rolled the ball to within a foot and Mickelson conceded the par. When Mickelson missed his putt, it was over.

His newfound mantra of conservatism failed to help Mickelson, who made a bad swing and hit it in the water on the 11th, the other par-five coming in.

Mickelson said there was no hesitation in going for the green at the 18th.

“Obviously, after Davis missed the fairway and had to lay up ... a good three-wood could have gotten the ball on the green and a two-putt birdie would have been able to win. He would have had a long putt, but I pull-hooked it.”

Mickelson, who birdied three consecutive holes on the front nine, was less than pleased about making five bogeys.

“It was a disappointing day,” he said. “I felt like I was playing better than that.”

Woods made only one bogey against Leaney, who defeated Ian Poulter in the quarterfinals, and he was 2-up through the 11th before Leaney rallied.

They were tied until the par-three 16th, where Woods hit a seven-iron to 13 feet and made the putt for birdie to win the hole.

Leaney found a bunker at the 17th and Woods hit another seven-iron to 11 feet and won the match with a birdie putt.

Woods is playing in the final for the third time in his five appearances here.

He lost in the quarterfinals to Jeff Maggert in 1999, lost to Clarke in the 2000 final, lost to Peter O’Malley in the first round in 2002 and won it last year when he defeated David Toms in the final.