Photo: © Jack Nicklaus design The The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain, new home to the Accenture Match Play Championship, is a lot more challenging and will put on a good event this week.

Course information:

The course will be a par 72 and measure 7,849 yards. That is a bit mis-leading because it won’t play that long since it’s at 3,500 in elevation. Large greens with significant undulation, wide fairways and carries over desert washes define each course. The bunkering varies from classic, pot-style obstacles to expansive areas that stretch close to 80 yards along the edges of the fairways. The golf courses feature Bentgrass greens, while the tees, fairways and rough are Bermuda (with perennial rye overseed).

History of Match Play:

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

Match play's roots are in Great Britain, then moved across the Atlantic when the game became popular there. 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 started as a match play event in 1916 and became one of the biggest tournaments. Interest in the 1920s was incredible. Of course it's easy to see why if you take a look at the list of winners: Gene Sarazen won twice and Walter Hagen won five times. That's one of the reasons there were 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 match play unfriendly. In its infancy it couldn't be controlled like stroke play events. When TV started covering golf tournaments in the '50s, only the weekends 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. 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 back 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 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 England 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 I was 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 it 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 quiet and Chuck 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 and resisted it. As a 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 and admitted he hated doing match play on television.

So, what saved match play? The Ryder Cup was becoming very popular after the European team won in 1987. In 1989, the USA covered the matches from England and created a lot more interest, not only in the matches but in match play in general. In 1991 NBC took over the Ryder Cup and again the golf world loved every minute of the match play events.

The Ryder Cup matches, along with the advent of cable and the increased technology that allowed golf to be televised over 18 holes, helped make match play more of a reality again in the mid-90s. The Presidents 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 of the matches from start to finish. Also helping things was the addition of quick tape editing, which meant that if a match ended early, television wasn't twittling its thumbs with nothing to do to fill the time. Now if a match ended early highlights of that match or 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 VolvoWorld Match Play Championship in Spain and the World Golf Championship - Accenture Match Play championship. It has been well received by the public and has been growing in stature with each year.

The Buzz:

In a span of just a coupe of days, golf has been reborn. Golf has been on a big slide since Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open, it was slow in the beginning and accelerated through the fall series and with the start up at the Mercedes, it has been slow in bouncing back. But then, last Thursday everything changed. First we had the announcement that Tiger Woods was ready to play and make his comeback this week at the Accenture Match Play. Then we had Phil Mickelson win in L.A., thus a lot of interest.

These two have stoked the already good news of the first real real event of the year. Yes we have had seven events on the PGA Tour in '09 but we haven't had all of the great players in the world in one place. This week we have all top-64 players, the first time in years of no withdrawals.

Of course the main storyline is Tiger and Phil, with the possibility of al semi-final match-up. But there are other big storylines. Like how is the new course going to play? This is suppose to be the permanent home of this event for a number of years and we have to wonder if this will be a great venue for match play. Of course we all talk about having a challenging course that is tough, but for good theatre it's best to have a risk/reward course that challenges players but isn't overtaxing. The Gallery Course has fit the bill the last two years, lots of birdies with the possibility of a high score on a hole. The early reaction on the course is that it's nice but the greens are too big and have too much undulation in them, look for players complaining about this. Still the course fits the bill of being a challenge that will produce a lot of birdies.

Another big story line is Rory McIlroy. With his win at the Dubai Desert Classic he created a lot of buzz and is playing his first tournament in the United States. Many in Europe feel he is the next Tiger Woods and will get his place in the sun with a first round match against Louis Oosthuizen, the South African youth that has quite a game. Look for a great match-up of what could be the future of golf. Another possible superstar is Spain's Alvaro Quiros, who plays against Stephen Ames. One of the big questions is how many upsets will come on Wednesday. Last year 13 higher seeds lost in the first round in what was the second biggest upsets of Accenture history. The biggest was in 1999 when 19 top-seeds lost, look for the possibility of a lot of upsets this week.

Lastly of the 64 players, 19 different countries are represented this week, the Unites States have 17 players with Australia and South Africa next with 8. The fourth largest country is England with 7 players.

Photo: © Nicklaus Design The greens will be very challenging and could be controversial this week.

Here are some things to look for this week:

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

The course favored the long hitters last year and the players that hit the most greens last year were in the finals.

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, avoiding 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.

Here is a look at who has won the most in this event:
Matchs	Player	record
37	Tiger Woods	31-6, 83.7 percent
31	David Toms	23-8, 74.2 percent
26	Davis Love III	18-8, 69.2 percent
21	Darren Clarke	14-7, 66.6 percent
20	Adam Scott	13-7, 65.0 percent
22	Stewart Cink	13-9 59.1 percent
22	Phil Mickelson	13-9, 59.1 percent

In this format, inexperience and being a long shot is sometimes a plus. As a perfect example, over the years the No. 1 seed has a 35-8 record, thanks in part to Tiger Woods winning last year. The 19th seed has a 13-8 record while the No. 44 seed has a 12-9 record. What's more, the 59th seed has a 10-9 record. Yes, 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 year's 12 Accenture rookies (Anthony Kim, Rory McIlroy, Alvaro Quiros, Ross Fisher, Oliver Wilson, Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Prayad Marksaeng, Lin Wen-Tang, Mathew Goggin, Soren Kjeldsen and Charl Schwartzel) have just as much of a chance as Tiger Woods. Just look at what happened to Woods five years ago when 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 his first-round draw Brendan Jones it's going to be a walk in the park because it won't be. A couple of things that can help you pick 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.

A look at the upsets of top-seeded players in championship history:
Year	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Quarter	Semi	Final
2008	13	8	2	2	0	0
2007	11	7	3	0	0	0
2006	13	6	7	4	1	1
2005	13	6	7	4	1	1
2004	12	7	3	0	0	0
2003	13	9	4	0	0	1
2002	13	11	3	4	2	2
2001	12	10	6	1	2	2
2000	11	7	1	1	1	1
1999	18	9	4	3	1	0
Totals	129	81	37	19	8	7

Also. look at players with good single records in the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. Players like Davis Love III, Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk. Also players that have been doing well of late like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Geoff Ogilvy should do well this week. But the most difficult place to pick winners is 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, 21 of the 32 won in 2007, while in 2006 19 of the 32 top seeds won. In 2005, 13 of the 32 top seeds won while in 2004, 12 of the 32 top seeds prevailed so you can see that 13 underdogs won last year, 19 in 2005 and 20 in 2004.

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