Matches Can Go Out Fast

They’re passing out $7.5 million this week at La Costa, a resort famous for mud baths, herbal wraps and yoga classes and notorious for hosting the World Golf Championships Accenture Match Play Championship seven times ... often in conditions resembling mud baths.

The tournament is frequently over for some players before they can finish saying its name. And one more thing. Although this is a world golf event, the world apparently is limited to San Diego County.

David Toms is the defending champion in the event that begins today, and $1.3 million is the winner’s share, up for grabs by the 64-player field based on rankings. The format is easily understood -- an 18-hole match-play competition based on a simple formula: win or go home.

For some, that’s a cold reality not easily embraced.

“Eighteen holes, it’s just a putting contest,” Ernie Els said. “Thirty-six holes [the length of the final] is the right length to decide the better player will come through at the end of the day.

“It’s a bit of a different mind-set. Everybody thought this kind of match play, it’s like a tennis tournament. Tennis? Golf is a little different.”

It certainly has been a little different at this match play. In its first year, 1999, Andrew Magee made it to the final, to his great surprise, because he expected his visit to be brief and had packed only one clean shirt. He lost to Jeff Maggert.

The next year, Tiger Woods hit a branch with his backswing, dislodged a pine cone and was conked on the head.

Davis Love, playing Woods in the 2004 final, became agitated when a pro-Tiger fan heckled him, so Love stopped play, pointed out his antagonist and instructed security guards to remove the offender.

Love probably should have had Woods ejected instead, losing 3 and 2.

Then there was the 2001 event, the one time this World Golf Championships tournament was played somewhere other than La Costa -- Australia, in the first week of January, thereby ensuring the no-show list would be notable.

Woods, Phil Mickelson, Retief Goosen, Colin Montgomerie and Lee Westwood failed to appear, but Els showed up and was top-seeded. Hal Sutton was the No. 2-seeded player. Steve Stricker, ranked 112th, defeated Pierre Fulke in the final.

Els skipped playing here in 2004 and 2005 and Vijay Singh didn’t play in 2003. This year, sixth-ranked Sergio Garcia decided he’d rather hang out back home in Borriol, Spain.

Els doesn’t care much for the 7,277-yard La Costa course, which has had the misfortune of being inundated by rain several times during tournament week. Last year, the first day of play was washed out and several fairways resembled lakes.

But the biggest challenge the pros face is not the course, but the possibility of losing in the first round. Montgomerie, who came here from his home in England, plays Niclas Fasth of Sweden in today’s first round.

“I’ve come a long way to play someone from the other continent,” Montgomerie said.

At least Montgomerie is accustomed to traveling. He is flying from here back to England, then checking on the course he’s designing in Dubai, then flying to Florida to play at Bay Hill and the Players Championship, then the BellSouth at Atlanta and the Masters. Hopefully, he remembers to pack better than Magee did.

Woods had to withdraw after two rounds of the Nissan Open and said he lost five pounds because of flu. After playing a practice round Tuesday morning with Sean O’Hair and Richard Green of Australia, Woods said he felt fine. Woods has drawn Stephen Ames of Canada in a first-round match and knows what to expect.

“It’s a boat race, 18 holes,” he said.

Whether that’s the best way to decide the top player doesn’t really matter, except possibly to television, because it’s just the way it is. But that’s not the case at the World Match Play Championship at Wentworth, England, which consists of four days of 36-hole matches between 16 players.

It’s no wonder that Els, a six-time winner of the event, favors such a format. Not only is he responsible for re-designing the course, his house is near the 16th hole.

As for Woods, he said the 18-hole match-play format does not compare to a 36-hole competition.

“I think the match play at Wentworth has a better format. Thirty-six holes is going to be ... look at the winners ... usually the better players have won that event, just because it’s 36 holes.”

This week, the only days 36 holes are played are Saturday, when the quarterfinals and semifinals are scheduled, and Sunday in the 36-hole final.

Tinkering with the format and having two rounds of stroke play to reach the top 16 could be done, according to Fred Couples, but he said it’s not the right way to go.

“That’s not the worst idea, but then it’s just a typical golf tournament,” Couples said. “I think it’s fine, I really do. I wouldn’t change it. It’s a lot of golf in a short time, but it’s stamina and when you start playing two rounds a day and beating guys, you’re beating them because you’re a better player.

“I think 18 [holes] is a good number, unless you chop the field to nothing, and then you can play 36-hole matches.”

Brad Faxon, a former member of the PGA Tour policy board, said he understands the problems associated with an 18-hole match format.

“I think television gets nervous because they’re afraid they are going to lose a Tiger or an Ernie or a Phil on the first day, and it’s happened,” he said.

Private jets filled the sky in 2002, filled with the victims involved in a first-round exodus, a group that included Woods, Mickelson, David Duval and Montgomerie, joined a day later by Els, Singh, Goosen and Love.

Next year, the World Golf Championships Match Play Championship takes a southwestern shift to Tucson.

The scope of this world event will then have spanned the globe, all the way from Southern California to the desert landscape of Arizona, lugging its 18-hole format along as luggage, stuffed with memories of warm mud baths, falling pine cones and too few clean shirts.

*

* FIRST-ROUND MATCHUPS: D6

THIS WEEK

* What: WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship.

* When: Today-Sunday.

* Where: La Costa Resort, Carlsbad.