Weekend Wrap - Match Play Edition

Order is restored as World No. 1 Rory McIlroy prevails in the Bataan Death March WGC Cadillac Match Play Championship.... As much as I love match play, the problems with the format can be readily grasped with a quick glance at the right-hand side of the bracket, where the Danny Willet-Gary Woodland semi-final shockingly failed to bring Western civilization to a halt.  Go figure...

Shane Ryan frames it as the Once and Future King reclaiming his throne:

The coronation was quick and brutal -- the minute Jordan Spieth slipped his arms into the 

green jacket, the loyal foot soldiers of the young king began erasing the memory of all those who had once worn the crown. The old monuments were toppled, the enemy castles were burned, and the dissidents were banished into the wilderness. Those who remained quickly learned to speak the language of the conqueror.

Meanwhile, in exile, one particular golfer must have felt a bit perplexed. He had notched a top-five finish at Augusta, and a few months earlier, at age 25, he had won his fourth career major while grabbing the top spot in the world rankings — a spot he still held. If golf needed a new king, or the next Tiger, he seemed to have a strong claim. Instead, Rory McIlroy was on the outs, crushed by the Spieth coup d'etat, and would now have to resort to guerrilla warfare, miles from the throne.

OK, that's plenty. Time to dial down the rhetoric -- you get the point, and the whole ramble was probably unfair to the 21-year-old Masters champ. Jordan Spieth's win was remarkable, and the similarities to Tiger's '97 win were uncanny, and the hyperbole that followed wasn't his fault. In fact, he took every opportunity to admit that he wasn't yet on Rory's level. You can't blame him if nobody seemed to get the message. 

"The next generation is here!" bellowed Jim Nantz that Sunday, and if you were waiting for a CBS underling to scurry to his side and whisper that its members already arrived, you'd wait in vain. The narrative had been established: Jordan was the only show in town.

I went a bit long on that excerpt because Shane gets the joke... In a sport in which players struggle to retain their form on the walk from the range to the first tee, the anointment of Jordan Spieth as our Lord and Savior has gotten a tad comical at times.  He's no doubt a great young player who will fill many highlight reels in the years to come, but that McIlroy kid has some game as well...

And he showed quite a bit of grit this week, no?  He didn't exactly have his best stuff, he found himself down to some very strong players (Horschel, Casey and Furyk, and I might be missing one or two).  And the Gods of PGA Tour scheduling stuck it to him pretty badly with that Casey quarter-final.... nothing like a 4:30 wake-up call to hit the range at 5:30, to finish off a stubborn (albeit under-the-weather) opponent, for the pleasure of gutting out another two matches...  

As loyal readers of this site are well aware, the PGA Tour exists for the sole purpose of providing lay-ups to your humble correspondent.  While we recently moped about potentially moving on from our favorite Shakespearean reference, there was Jim Furyk walking off the fifteenth green one-up against the best player on the planet.  Surely our hero had him just where he wanted him...  If I were writing the script I would have Rory downing a Five Hour Energy Drink at that critical juncture, before throwing up a tasty birdie-birdie-eagle finish.  Alas, Poor Furyk, I knew him, Horatio, you'll find him in the consolation match.

So, what did everyone think of the week?  My first reaction is a strange one, but there's just way too much golf.... I'm sorry, but when there's more golf than three of me can consume, it's an issue.  Cameron Morfit does his best to sort through the issues with the format:

From a purely competitive standpoint, that was the tragic flaw of this new format. It’s what allowed Rickie Fowler and Senden to win their respective pools even before dinnertime Thursday, the equivalent of Vijay Singh clinching the 2008 FedEx Cup before the Tour Championship.

With Fowler and Senden having already clinched, the other unlucky players in groups 13 and 3—namely Harris English and Shane Lowry in 13, and Haas and Stenson in 3—had no hope of advancing to this weekend’s knockout rounds despite going 1-1 in their first two matches.

Fowler and Senden, meanwhile, could have skipped out and gone to the movies. (Instead both won again Friday, beating McDowell and Todd, respectively.) “It’s all come out a bit flat,” Stenson said. He was right.

Our PGA Tour heroes are a bit of a pampered lot, but it seems that porridge is always too hot or two cold... Schadenfreude is one of my favorite words, and it is oh so apt here as we got to this point by giving them exactly what they wanted...  For the last few years we've heard that the players absolutely loather the "one-and-done" nature of the event, that they hate flying 6,000 miles to play sixteen holes.

Now we knew going in that the format would lead to some unfair results, but isn't that what match play is all about?  More from Morfit:

Keegan Bradley, Ian Poulter and others retreated into a furious silence as they trudged through their three guaranteed matches of “pool” play Wednesday through Friday. Bradley was slamming car doors after a tense second-round match against Bubba Watson on Thursday, when the two were observed arguing over a ruling on the 12th tee. Then came Friday’s standoff between 28-year-old Bradley and 51-year-old Miguel Angel Jimenez, which didn’t quite reach the depths of Pedro Martinez pushing Don Zimmer to the turf at the 2003 ALCS, but seemed to come close.

First and foremost, I just LOVE the Pedro-Zim reference in a golf post.  But more on point, I think we can all agree that "Furious silence" from Keegan and Poults is a feature, not a bug... Sheesh, how is that any different than playing out the string on a 75-74-MC, something with which you'd think both of those guys are well-acquainted...

Back to Cam:

First, it laid the groundwork for the bizarre scene in which Bradley and Jimenez and Bradley’s caddie, Steve Hale, went all Jerry Springer at one another in front of the world. Bradley was running hot all week, and Friday he finally snapped. Why? Because it’s stressful to play bad; it’s potentially insulting for players who simply don’t have it, like Bradley, Jason Day, Jimmy Walker and others who went 0-2 and then 0-3, to be required to stick around for three days and be exposed in front of the world, even when they can’t win. The greatest golfers on earth don’t like to be embarrassed.

Of course not all of the 0-3s felt that way. Ryan Palmer was in a fine mood as he walked to his courtesy car in the players’ parking lot. He had played well in his first match (losing 4 and 2 to Anirban Lahiri), terribly in his second (falling to Marc Leishman 4 and 3), and well again in his third (losing 2 and 1 to Justin Rose despite being 2 under par through 17 holes).

That would be because he, meaning Palmer, is a professional... I'm actually not someone that is greatly put off by a little anger on the golf course.  You want these guys to show some passion, in fact I'm more critical of the guys that just collect a paycheck and don't seem to care about winning.  But this is your job and there's no job in the world that doesn't have a little frustration thrown in.... if the worst day on your job requires you to play 18 holes staring at those massive Cypress trees and Lake Merced, you're a pretty lucky SOB and it might be nice for you to recognize that fact... 

In news of a player absorbing unfairness and acting like a grown-up, there was this:

If the Tour does nothing else—Jordan Spieth tweeted after his loss on Friday that it could make the first three rounds stroke play and the rest match play, a bit like the U.S. Amateur—it will need to abandon the idea that head-to-head matchups should take the place of a sudden-death playoff.

I appreciate the constructive suggestion, though I'm of mixed minds on it...every other event on the calendar is 72 holes of medal play, so is more of the same really the answer?  I would, however, suggest that if you're going that direction to make it only 36 holes, as it's a long, grueling week that inevitably affects the quality of play on the weekend.

Two other quick notes from the week....Michael Collins had quite the Saturday night as he recounts here:

SAN FRANCISCO -- What was supposed to be one of the greatest fight nights in the history of boxing turned into the most surreal impromptu pizza parties I've ever been a part of Saturday at TPC Harding Park. 

When the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight was just about to start, I was flanked by the world's No. 1 golfer, Rory McIlroy, and broadcasting great Jimmy Roberts. Just then, McIlroy's manager, Sean O'Flaherty, came in the door with roughly eight pizzas he'd run out and bought for the tent. 

Did I mention we were watching the fight on a 19-inch TV in the room where the players hold their news conferences for the WGC-Cadillac Match Play?

Here's the accompanying photo:

It's such a nice story that I'll give him a pass for playing so loose with the concept of "Broadcasting great."