Photo: © Joann Dost / Gallery Golf Club The Gallery Golf Club, new home to the Accenture Match Play Championship, is a lot more challenging and prettier than LaCosta. This is the par 4, 13th green with Tucson in the background.

Course information:

The average green size on the South Course is 8,000 square feet, which is a little over the average on the PGA Tour. Course has 88 bunkers and nine holes have water hazards on it. It's a perfect risk/reward course that will give the players more of a challenge than La Costa.

History of Match Play:

Match play has been a competitive form of golf that has been around since the birth of the game. Yes its been sadly neglected for many years but its making a serious comeback.

Match play had its roots in Great Britain, then moved across the Atlantic when the game became popular her. At the turn of the century more than half of the championships in Britain were determined by match play. Today in the 13 national championships run by the USGA, all but the U.S. Open, U.S. Senior Open and the U.S. Women's Open determine the winner in match play. In the early part of the 19th century, match play was the proper way to determine champions, in a way it was the original form of competition, mano-a-mano. In 1934 four of the 45 tournaments on the PGA Tour were match play. Twenty years later there was only one and by 1958 match play disappeared off the face of the PGA Tour. With the advent of professional golf and television, match play took a back seat. The PGA Championship was started as a match play event in 1916 and became one of the biggest tournaments because of the mano-a-mano way it determined the winner. Interest in the 20s was incredible, of course look at the list of winners, Gene Sarazen won twice and Walter Hagen ruled the roast winning five times. That's one of the reasons for so many match play events in 1934. The PGA Championship continued to shine in the 30s and 40s with the likes of Tommy Armour, Gene Sarazen, Paul Runyan, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan winning more than half of the championships. But the shine turned tinted in the 50s when a rash of nobodies won. The PGA Championship could have survived but they had one very important entity that hated it, television.

TV deemed it unfriendly. In its infancy it couldn't be controlled like stroke play events. When TV started covering golf tournaments in the 50s, only the weekend were covered with only a one hour shows. So all people saw of a tournament was the last two or three holes. With the PGA Championship going through a bad spell of champions, plus matches that didn't go to the 18th hole TV ran away from the championship. So without television the championship was going nowhere so they changed the format and went to stroke play in 1958. Since then only a number of tournaments have been played on the PGA Tour under a match play format since the PGA Championship went to stroke play. The first was the U.S. Professional match play championship which started in 1971 in North Carolina and went three years before it wasn't renewed. DeWitt Weaver won the first, followed by Jack Nicklaus in 1972 and John Schroeder in 1973. In 1984 Deane Beman and Seiko thought that it was time for match play to return and made the Tucson Open the first tournament of the year and had a match play elimination format with all of the money counting as an official event. In the finals Tom Watson beat Gil Morgan and many thought that match play was on the PGA Tour for good. But it wasn't. The following year Jim Thorpe beat Jack Renner 4 & 3 in the finals and the PGA Tour's love affair with match play came to an end. The following year the tournament was again an elimination tournament but instead of match play, stroke play was used. Again, TV was the problem, with matches ending too early and star players being eliminated in early rounds match play was deemed very unpopular for any network to put it on the air.

With the increased popularity of the Ryder Cup matches in the early 90s, and the World Match play championship in Europe being successful since it first started in 1964 match play was again gaining some attention. But the major stumbling block was to get American TV to agree with it. I remember one night in the early 80s having dinner with a couple of people that included Chuck Howard, who not only was one of the people that ran ABC Sports but was the golf producer for the network. We were brainstorming new golf ideas and when if came around to me I said that it would be great if the PGA Tour had a few match play events. The table, with of course a couple of yes men, went terribly quite and Chuck looked at starred me down in a gruff type of way. With a little laugh he ended the idea by embarrassing me by saying, "you must really not treasure your job with such a asinine idea like that." Being a young production assistant back then I only wished that I could retreat under the table. Years later in talking with Chuck about match play he still hated the format a resisted it. Matter of fact it was really funny, even though he was the main producer of golf, in the years that I was at ABC Sports starting in 1975 he never produced the Ryder Cup matches, always saying that his football games were more important.

This presents a perfect segway to what saved match play. The Ryder Cup was becoming very popular with the European team winning in 1987. In 1989 USA covered the matches from England and created a lot more interest, not only in the matches but match play in general. In 1991 NBC took over the Ryder Cup and again the golf world thought it was the greatest.

The Ryder Cup matches along with the advent of cable and increased technology of golf being televised over 18 holes helped make match play more of a reality again in the mid-90s. The President Cup matches were developed in 1994 followed by the Anderson Consulting Match play championship in 1995. Both found success as earlier matches were put on cable. Television was also able to cover all the matches from start to finish, 18 hole coverage. Also helping things was the advent of quick tape editing which meant that if a match ended early television wasn't twitting there thumbs with nothing to do to fill out the time. Now if a match ended early highlights of that match and other matches could be put together and shown.

Apprehensively, match play has been embraced by the networks. Each year there are three match play events, either the Ryder Cup or President Cup, the HSBC World Match Play Championship in England and the World Golf Championship - Accenture Match Play championship. It has been well received by the public and has been growing in statute every year.

The Buzz:

We are going to have a much different type of Match Play this year, for the first time in a while there is no bitching about either the course, the local or anything about this championship. Everything is going way too smooth, all the players are going to show up with the exception of one.

The Weather is suppose to be perfect with the except of on Friday when rain is in the forecast, but what everyone is marvelling at is the Dove golf course. Everyone likes the course and the conditions, nobody has complained about it's condition. Last year half of the field complained about the Poa greens at La Costa, that isn't going to happen.

Here are some things to look for this week:

Photo: © Joann Dost / Gallery Golf Club The 10th at Gallery Golf Club, will be a gem of a par 5 for risk/reward giving players a tough second shot on this 540-yard hole.

The South Course at the Dove is going to be a risk/reward course. All the par 5s are reachable in two, but if shots are missed, a penalty will be dear.

This course will favor the long hitters

Match play is a rare format on the PGA Tour. Even though it's the game that is played regularly in golf clubs around the world, its not played that much on the PGA Tour. The secret to winning in match play is not playing the best but more importantly not doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. In a lot of matches someone could be striking the ball perfectly and putting well while his opponent could be hitting it all of the lot, missing greens but chipping in for halves on holes. Before you know it that match could come down to the final hole and the player that isn't doing the best could chip in and win a match. It happens all the time. Remember a score doesn't mean anything in match play.

In this format, inexperience and being a longshot sometimes is a plus. As a perfect example, over the years the number one seed has a 27 and 7 record. The 19th seed player has a 12 and 7 record while the number 44 seed has a 12 and 8 record. Even toward the bottom the 59th seed has a 10-8 record so this shows that year the first seed has an advantage but it doesn't guarantee a victory.

On the PGA Tour, there are some players that look more at a big check instead of playing to win. These players are dangerous in match play because they have only one thing to think about, winning. So in some respects this years nine Accenture rookies, Aaron Baddeley, Bradley Dredge, Johan Edfors, Paul Goydos, J.J. Henry, Brett Quigley, Jeev M. Singh, Brett Wetterich and Young-Eun Yang have just as much of a chance as Tiger Woods has. Just look at what happened to Woods four years ago, he got beat in the first round by Peter O'Malley. So don't think that just because Tiger Woods is a better player than first round draw J.J. Henry its going to be a walk in the park, it won't be. Another little tidbit about rookies in this event, over the years rookies are 76-79 in there first time so don't discount rookies.

Couple of things that could help you in picking a winner is to look at those with good match play records. Past winners of the U.S. Amateur like Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard and Scott Verplank know how to win in this format so they have a bit of an advantage.

Also look at players with good single records in the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup, players like Phil Mickelson and Tom Lehman. Also players that have been doing well of late like Charles Howell III, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods should be a factor. But the hardest factor is to pick winners, of the 32 first round matches if you can pick halve of them right you are a super star. As an example last year 19 of the 32 top seeds won while in 2005, 13 of the 32 top seeds won while in 2004, 12 of the 32 top seeds won their matches so you can see that 13 underdogs won last year, 19 in 2005 and 20 in 2004. Now 2007 has had a mix of stars winning (Mickelson & Woods) but there have been a few longshots (Goydos, Hoffman & Baddeley) so there is no rhyme or reason on who will get to the finals.

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