These Matches Don’t Burn

Something really unusual happened Thursday at La Costa Resort. And no, it wasn’t that the sun came out or that no one fell face-first into the mud and was lost.

It’s that there weren’t any huge, first-round upsets, a state of affairs for which the Accenture Match Play Championship is well known.

Usually, the first day of match play sees a boatload of unexpected defeats, but the only player ranked in the top 10 to lose in the first round was No. 9 Mike Weir, who lost 1-up to Kirk Triplett.

Afterward, Triplett described the journey.

“I drug Mike right down in the mud with me today and we rolled around for a while,” he said.

That’s not the technical explanation, of course, but it was good enough to describe Thursday’s golfing experience.

For the rest of the top players, it was a routine day in the water park that was La Costa.

Actually, it was more like La Costa Lite, with nine holes shortened by 10 yards or more -- the biggest change at the par-four ninth, where 305 yards were sliced off the hole.

Instead of measuring 467 yards, it became a 162-yard par three. The hole was such a swampy mess, there was no way to play the hole as it was, so a tee box was stuck in the middle of the fairway and presto, instant par three.

La Costa played 478 yards shorter, down to 6,799 yards.

Tiger Woods won for the 13th consecutive time in this tournament. He scored a routine 4-and-3 victory over Nick Price, earned a second-round encounter with Nick O’Hern of Australia and considered himself fortunate to have been able to safely navigate his way around a watery course with bumpy greens.

“It was kind of funny,” Woods said. “It’s worse than putting on waffle irons. At least a waffle iron is all the same height. Nothing rolls the same. You can hit good putts and look great and hit good putts and look like an absolute idiot.”

Meanwhile, looking great were Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, Retief Goosen, Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott, Padraig Harrington and Davis Love III, the rest of the top 10 here (Ernie Els isn’t playing) and all of them first-round winners.

Singh was four under par in his 4-and-3 romp over Shingo Katayama and faces Jay Haas in the second round. Mickelson had six birdies and defeated Loren Roberts, 3 and 1. He’ll play Angel Cabrera next.

“The conditions are not good, but everybody has to play the same thing,” Singh said. “We are professionals, we know the conditions, we know you can’t help Mother Nature.”

Goosen struggled, with only one birdie the last seven holes, but he still scored a 1-up victory over Stephen Leaney and will face Fred Couples in the second round. Jim Furyk had six birdies and still lost, 3 and 1, to Ian Poulter, who had seven birdies.

It simply wasn’t an easy day to be playing golf on a rain-soaked course. No one thought La Costa was in tip-top shape, although some players found the course conditions worse than others.

“Disgusting, absolutely disgusting,” Robert Allenby said. “If this was a normal tournament, we wouldn’t be playing.”

Allenby, who defeated Todd Hamilton 6 and 5, didn’t think much of the greens.

“You walk on them, I had Darren Clarke in front of me and he’s got his size 12s. His heel prints were probably three inches deep.”

He didn’t like the fairways, either.

“You can’t even walk down the fairways. You’ve got to walk down the [cart] paths.”

Goosen also had a problem with the footprints on the greens.

“It’s horrendous,” he said. “They’re casting shadows, so big are these holes.”

Jeff Maggert, who played Padraig Harrington close but wound up losing, 1-up, said putting was sort of tricky.

“The greens were so bad, you had to hit it a foot away to make a birdie,” he said. “The way the greens are bouncing around, it’s hard.”

Scott birdied two of the last three holes and defeated Trevor Immelman, 2-up, which means that Scott, the winner/non-champion from Monday’s playoff at Riviera, meets David Howell in the next round.

Scott said he believed Allenby’s footprint estimations might be off a little.

“We like to exaggerate,” he said. “There are footprints, that’s just how these greens are, there’s been so much rain. We’re lucky to be out there, really.”

* Today’s matchups...D10