Match Play To Adopt Pool Play Format Starting In 2015

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Ron Kroichick reports in anticipation of Wednesday's big day of announcements at Harding Park that the 2015 WGC Match Play will adopt a round-robin pool play format providing some guaranteed great golf viewing for the first three days.

This will keep the full field around through Friday but keep the final 16 format the same as in the past.

The top 64 players in the Official World Golf Ranking will qualify for the event, as in the past. Starting next year at Harding, the field will be divided into 16 four-player “groups,” with round-robin match play on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of tournament week.

Then the winner of each group will advance to the round of 16 on Saturday morning. (Head-to-head results will be used to break two-way ties, with sudden-death playoffs for three-way ties.)

Referee Of Sergio-Fowler Match Elaborates

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Thanks to reader Patrick for sending in Dale Jackson's excellent roundup of his referree duties during last week's WGC Match Play match between Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia.

He explains the situation with the bees in which Garcia was well-within his right to ask for relief, and then tries to make sense of the strange concession by Sergio. Jackson comes away impressed by both players:

It quickly became clear that both Sergio and Ricky had made use of Rule 2-4, which sets, in part, “A player may concede his opponent’s next stroke at any time, provided the opponent’s ball is at rest.”  In language most golfers are used to, they had agreed their putts were “good for good”.  It was a very unusual move by Sergio to concede Ricky’s lengthy putt but he stated afterword he felt the bee incident on the previous hole had not been fair to Ricky who had a makable birdie putt that he missed.  The concessions by both players was sportsmanship of the highest level and it was consistent with how they conducted themselves throughout the match.  They were complementary of each other’s shots, seemed to enjoy each other’s company but played a hard fought and well played  match.