Match Play - Iterations and Permutations

I've had to laugh as folks have opined on the revised format for the event, as until now it's been a clear case of premature opinionation.  The issue has been whether Day 3 would live up to Day 1 of the simple single-elimination business model.  And it just might... Jim McCabe takes us group-by-group the see where matters stand:

SAN FRANCISCO — Head-to-head games between undefeated players. Three-man

playoffs. Marquee names moving on, marquee names going home. With Friday being the last of three days of round-robin play, the WGC-Match Play Championship will be trimmed to 16 players. 

The only thing is, 42 players are still alive for those berths into the Round of 16. So after two days of losing, but not going home, Friday definitely will be time to head to the exits for a line of players.

Jim goes through the groups in numerical fashion, but I'll try to make logical groupings of the groups instead:

 I Love When A Plan Comes Together - In a perfect world, we'll be treated to matches between the class of each group, i.e., two players each 2-0:

GROUP 1: As simple as it gets. Rory McIlroy (2-0) vs. Billy Horschel (2-0). Winner moves on, loser goes home.

As a bonus, these two have history dating back to the 2007 Walker Cup:

Friday’s marquee matchup will feature McIlroy and Horschel, who have a bit of history together, having butted heads at the 2007 Walker Cup. Horschel beat McIlroy, then McIlroy beat Horschel twice, but the bigger takeaway was Horschel struck McIlroy as a little overly brash. 

“Fortunately, he’s mellowed considerably since then,” McIlroy said with a laugh before the tournament began earlier this week.

As for the Sneds-Duf consolation match, I'm dying to know who walks away with Miss Congeniality.

GROUP 2: Another head-to-head, 2-0 vs. 2-0 game that will decide who moves on. Jordan Spieth, 21, will play a gentleman who is exactly twice his age, Lee Westwood.

GROUP 4: Another breeze. Bubba Watson (2-0) will play Louis Oosthuizen (2-0), with the winner advancing to the next round.

GROUP 11: The third- and fourth-seeded players in the group — Webb Simpson and Gary Woodland — are both 2-0 and will play, with the winner advancing to the Round of 16.

One quarter of the groups played out in perfect fashion, and while Webb-Woodland isn't going to drive ratings, the other three are pretty appealing matches (including a mulligan for the 2012 Masters playoff).

It's Over Before It's Over -  This is pretty much the worst-case scenario, where neither of the matches in a group are relevant.  Fortunately there are only two such, including:

Group 3 - John Senden
Group 13 - Rickie Fowler

I'm sure you all had Senden in your brackets.

This Gets A Little Complicated -  The most common status is a group with one player at 2-0, but that player still needs to win to ensure a Saturday tee-time.  In some cases this player needs to win, in others he can still make it through depending upon the outcome of the other match.  These include:

GROUP 6: Marc Leishman
GROUP 7: Charley Hoffman
GROUP 8: Charl Schwartzel
GROUP 9: Paul Casey
GROUP 12: Brooks Koepka
GROUP 14: Hunter Mahan
GROUP 15: Danny Willett (who now answers to Unheralded Englishman)
GROUP 16: Hideki Matsuyama

For instance, one of the best matches today is Hunter Mahan v. Kooch, because it matters not that the latter lost to Ben Martin's ace, because it's Single Elimination, Baby!

Things That Make My Brain Hurt: Those that are keeping score will quickly note that we've omitted tow groups.  Stick with me here...

GROUP 5: OK, here come the most scenarios, because all four players — Jim Furyk, Martin Kaymer, Thongchai Jaidee, and George Coetzee — are alive at 1-1. Friday’s matches will showcase Furyk vs. Kaymer and Jaidee vs. Coetzee, so here goes: 

If Furyk and Jaidee win, Jaidee advances because he beat Furyk.
If Kaymer and Jaidee win, Kaymer moves on because he beat Jaidee.
If Furyk and Coetzee win, Furyk goes based on his win over Coetzee.
If Kaymer and Coetzee win, Coetzee gets the nod, thanks to his win over Kaymer.

Got that?

GROUP 10: When Tommy Fleetwood went extra holes to rally past Jamie Donaldson, another scenario was created in which all four players are alive. Friday, Sergio Garcia will play Donaldson and Fleetwood will take on Bernd Wiesberger, all of them 1-1. So here we go again: 

If Garcia and Wiesberger win, it will be Wiesberger who advances because he beat Garcia.
If Garcia and Fleetwood prevail, it will be Garcia who moves on because he beat Fleetwood.
If Donaldson and Wiesberger win, Donaldson gets to move on.
If Donaldson and Fleetwood win, the spot in the Round of 16 goes to Fleetwood.

 My only wish is that we get at least one three-man playoff.  Yanno, just because...

Stephen Hennessy provides a list of five things we learned on Day 2, including:

3. Being in the finals last year means nothing.

Neither Jason Day and Victor Dubuisson -- who faced off in the memorable WGC-Match Play championship last year -- are in good shape. Day and Dubuisson are both headed home after Friday, despite their match-play pedigrees. Tree-lined TPC Harding Park differs from last year's venue -- the desert Dove Mountain GC -- so maybe it's not too surprising. But you'd think Day would at least make the weekend.

We also learned that Keegan Bradley is way overrated....upon further review, perhaps that really is more of a preexisting condition.

Cliff Schrock performs a valuable service in reminding us that everything old is new again:

Round robins, both stroke-play and match-play varieties, were a familiar format during the first few decades of the PGA Tour, albeit usually with a smaller field than 64. It wasn't until around 1960 that they were eventually phased out by the predominant four-round, stroke-play tournament. Yet the tour's all-time winningest player, Sam Snead, has round-robin wins among his 82 career titles, including five at the Palm Beach Round Robin (also Goodall Round Robin), named after the clothing company. 

 Snead won the Palm Beach RR four times in the 1950s, including the one pictured here, the 1954 event held May 12-16 at Meadow Brook Club in Westbury, N.Y. The invitation event had 16 elite golfers -- presumably the tour's best 16 at the time -- play five rounds in groups of four. One round was played on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday and two rounds on Friday. You accumulated or lost points depending on how you fared in stroke differential against the other players in your group. Snead shot 67-72-68-66-65 and had a plus 62 to easily win over runner-up Bob Toski, who had plus 26.

Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize winning sports writer from the Times told us last year that the first golf event he covered was the Palm Beach Round Robin, though it was held at Wykagyl at that time.

Lastly, it turns out that the lads are getting a tad cranky... Now it's admittedly a hard-knock life when you're in the top 64 players in the world, private jet travel and Escalade courtesy cars losing their luster after repetition.  If I sound a tad less than sensitive on this subject, it's because the guys were cranky with the old "one and done" format as well...