MODERN professional golf has a tortured relationship with the match play format of the game and this week might mark the final time that the elite of the sport even bothers with it outside of team events such as the Ryder, Presidents and Hero Cups. Earlier this month it was announced that this edition of the World Golf Championship Dell Technologies Match Play – an event that takes five days to complete and around twice that to actually say the title out loud in its cumbersome entirety – would be the very last. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan insisted that match play would be considered for the schedule in the future, but with all the conviction of a father pretending that his children’s pony wasn’t headed for the knacker’s yard.
In that sense, the annual angst hanging over the tournament is about to be well and truly put out of its misery. And, excuse my mixing of metaphors, but the golf world’s attitude toward different formats always reminds me of a family which bellyaches about having turkey every Christmas dinner. Then, when mum surprises them all one year with a fatted goose, the ungrateful lot wonder aloud where the turkey is.
To remind ourselves then: this week is match play (which the traditionalists love), but the opening round involves groups (which the traditionalists hate), while non-traditionalists just wish everything was stroke play. Hoary old wisdom states that you cannot satisfy all of the people all of the time, but the WGC Dell has pulled off the remarkable trick of satisfying absolutely no-one, ever. Is it any wonder the tournament is lame and on its way to the glue factory?!
Stick with it for one last hurrah, however. We might not see its like again and it’s also true that the course at Austin Country Club is a decent one.
Tyrrell Hatton
Austin is a Pete Dye design and winners here had already proved themselves on his layouts. The first two winners – Jason Day and Dustin Johnson – had both won on Dye courses on their last starts on them, Bubba Watson had won on two different Dye courses, Billy Horschel had won twice on one, and both Kevin Kisner and Scottie Scheffler had already finished runner-up on the course. Austin is also in Texas and form in the Lone Star State has also been relevant: all six winners have already recorded a top three result there. The final factor worth considering is form. Four of those half dozen had already won in the calendar year, a fifth had finished second and even Kisner – the exception – had been in contention for the title at Bay Hill ahead of the final round.
Plenty of the stars have all three of those factors covered, of course, but I’m not wild on backing the favourites at 12/1 or shorter. Tyrrell Hatton, on the other hand, offers a bit more value. The Englishman has finished third at Dye’s Harbour Town in the RBC Heritage and, more to the point, he was runner-up in THE PLAYERS Championship two weeks ago. He lacks a top three in Texas but he has a raft of top finishes there. In fact, five of his eight starts there have been top 10s. That second place at Dye’s Sawgrass was no one-off either. He ended 2022 with second in the DP World Tour Championship and has finished top seven in four of his six 2023 starts. He’s made the knockout stages in three of his last four Austin starts and has it in him to go deep this week.
Chris Kirk
With his victory in the Honda Classic earlier this year Chris Kirk has earned a second start in Austin and he’ll have fond memories of the course after making the quarter finals in 2016. It made sense that he enjoyed that experience because he’s played well in Texas, winning at Colonial in 2015, and had threatened to win the same year’s PLAYERS Championship when leading after 54 holes. He contended there again in 2021 and has also ticked off a top 10 at Harbour Town. The win was far from his only good golf this year – he was also third twice in January – and he’s been granted a decent draw in Group 8.
Harris English
Back in 2021 Harris English won at the Dye-designed TPC River Highlands to confirm his place as one of the form players of the year. A couple of weeks later he very nearly won the WGC St Jude Invitational when leading through 54 holes but thereafter injury wreaked havoc with his career. In finishing 12th at Riviera and second at Bay Hill in recent weeks he’s dropped the hint that he’s ready to start winning again. He’s a lively outsider in his quarter of the draw.
