WGC-Match Play Championship

The season’s first World Golf Championships tournament, Accenture Match Play Championship, got underway Wednesday at La Costa Resort and Spa located in Carlsbad, California.

The top 64 players in the Official World Golf Ranking as of February 11th comprised the elite field. For the third time in four years, Tiger Woods is the No. 1 seed in the event, and he will draw No. 66, Peter O’Malley of Australia, who sneaked because two players ahead of him, Thomas Bjorn and José Cocéres, withdrew.

The bracket works the way it does in the NHL and the NBA playoffs; the top seed plays the last seed, the second best plays the second last, and so on. The only difference here is that there is no such thing as a best-of-seven series in match play.

On top of that sudden death format, anything can happen in match play format—as clichéd as it may seem. Technically, it’s not guaranteed that Woods will beat the relatively unknown O’Malley in the first round. Okay, maybe that’s stretching a little bit, but you get the point.

Speaking of Tiger, this is the only World Golf Championships event that he has yet to capture. He made sure he would prepare for this event by skipping the Nissan Open, in which he had played every year as a pro until this past week.

But Woods’ journey toward the elusive match play championship will be far from easy. Not only is it because match play is very unpredictable, but there are many golfers in the middle of the bracket on hot streaks. With that in mind, here are previews of some intriguing first-round matches. Check how many of these predictions are correct.

• No. 4 Sergio Garcia vs. No. 61 Lee Janzen: Garcia got off to a blazing start with a win at the season-opening Mercedes Championships, but has cooled off since. Instead, it’s been Janzen, two-time U.S. Open champ, who drew more attention with two consecutive top-5 finishes in the West Coast Swing. Garcia has proven to be a fine match player, but Janzen has played singles matches on two Ryder Cup teams and one Presidents Cup team. A potential upset.

• No. 10 Chris DiMarco vs. No. 55 Steve Stricker: Stricker’s defence for his match play title will likely end here, as the red-hot DiMarco, now No. 10 in the world, will pass by him with ease. DiMarco already has four top-10s in five starts this season, including a win at the Phoenix Open. DiMarco’s inexperience may be a factor, but he has been playing too well to get knocked out of the first round.
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