March Madness

If you watched any of the bracket selection show on Golf Channel last night, you know what this event wants to be when it grows up....  It's not and it won't be, but let's not be so bitter that we can't enjoy one week of match play.

Shack unsurprisingly devotes his Forward Press column to teeing up the event:

Everything will change in dramatic fashion this week with Dell rescuing the WGC

Match Play Championship and putting a strong Austin bent on the proceedings, like free Uber rides and plenty of parties. Whether all of Austin's fun and tech industry energy masks the uneasy feeling players have about match play two weeks before the Masters remains to be seen. But so far, so good. 

"If the difficulty to get a ticket is an indication it is going to be fantastic,” says Austin resident and now-retired PGA Tour pro Joe Ogilvie. “Austin Country Club has embraced the event and they have driven the success.”

No question that the Tour landed a first-rate sponsor and an appropriate venue.  I don't know the track, but the buzz seems to be that it will work quite well for match play with their nines reversed.  Now, about that date.....

The groups brackets can be viewed here and opening round match-ups here..  Apologies, but attampts to embed the first-day tee times created formatting havoc.  Not many of these matches jump off the page at you, with the Fowler-Duf-Daddy pairing perhaps the most interesting...

You remember the format I'm sure, three days of round-robin play with the sixteen group winners moving on.  The format is sub-optimal, sacrificing the urgency of single elimination that created an upside-down tournament, with the first day being the most interesting.  But the compromise was reasonable to keep the players happy and entice the new sponsor, and we recapture some of that urgency on Thursday and Friday.

It's also true that we know-it-alls sometimes don't know as much as it seems....For instance, my favorite moment from last year's event was the Friday Keegan Bradley-Miguel Angel Jiminez cage match in which both players were 0-2 and had no hopes of moving on.  Of course we couldn't anticipate Keegs acting like a five-year old, or could we?

Joel Beall has the horse right here:

What To Watch: Jason Day, coming off a win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, has a strong record in match play events...Jordan Spieth failed to make it out of pool play in 2015, and hasn't placed inside the top 15 since his win at Kapalua on January 10. However, the No. 1 player in the world will have the crowd in his favor, as he returns to his college town...Though his six double-bogeys at Bay Hill have people talking, the fact that McIlroy was 16-under on his other 66 holes makes him a formidable match-play opponent...With a premium on shotmaking, look for approach savants like Hideki Matsuyama, Patrick Reed and Brendan Grace to be tough outs.

Bet with your head, not over it....

Back to Shack on the venue:

The event fittingly lands at ACC, which dates to 1899 and is now at its third site. The

wild Pete Dye design that figures to provide a turbulent setting for match play golf. A 1984 design that features two distinct nines that have been flipped for this week’s event, ACC’s closing lakeside stretch will play a more prominent (and fan friendlier) role than just about any course to have hosted the WGC Match Play. 

Austin CC was the home club of legendary instructor Harvey Penick, whose Little Red Book became the biggest selling golf instruction book of all time and spawned two sequels with author Bud Shrake. Penick worked most of his instruction magic with Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite and Betsy Rawls at a site since developed, but did oversee the club’s transition to the site of this week’s event. 

“Folks are beyond excited,” says Kevin Robbins, the former Austin American Statesman golf writer who is the author of the new biography on Penick. “They want to see Jason Day and Adam Scott and Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth and Phil Mickelson.”

The great thing about the week is the focus on Harvey Penick, who's gone but no forgotten.  Don't miss this Shack Q&A with Kevin Robbins, author of a forthcoming bio of the great man,  Here's his thoughtful take on the venue:

GS: How do you think Austin CC will work as a tournament venue? 

KR: Great question. I've played ACC a number of times, but not until the 2012 Texas Mid-Amateur qualifier did I truly learn how to score on it. It isn’t a bomber’s golf course. You have to hit spots with tee shots — sometimes in order to avoid losing a ball in Lake Austin or in a canyon on what will play in the Dell as the front nine. It’s Texas, so you play in wind. It’s a spectacular second-shot course. 

I think it favors players who excel with wedges. It’s a short course, so even with fairway metals and long irons from the tee, these players will have many approaches of 120 yards or less. Three of the par-five holes, and maybe four (I don’t know which tee they’ll play on No. 16), are reachable, so little scrambling chips and pitches will be crucial. 

It will be cozy. The club isn’t easy to get to, or to walk. It’s bound in many places by the lake, the canyons or, to a lesser extent, neighborhoods houses mansions. It’s not roomy like, say, an Oakmont or Augusta National. Think Colonial, only up-and-down like Augusta — with less space for spectators.

It's a difficult week for the networks and players, and the best stuff often comes early in the week.  Those caveats aside, it's great to see the intensity of mano-a-mano combat...  needless to say, it's not for everyone.  But a big part of the fun is seeing how they react when removed from their safe spaces.....  More like this, please.