Match recaps from Thursday: WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play - PGA TOUR

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GROUP 2

COLLIN MORIKAWA (1-0-1) tied SERGIO GARCIA (1-0-1)

For Garcia, this match of two 1-0 competitors turned into the Great Escape, not only in the overall match, but on the 18th hole, where he was in the right trees, 109 yards from the hole, and had to hit a low, hard-biting sand wedge that checked up nicely and gave him a putt to win the match. Garcia would miss from 26 feet, his ball sliding 3 feet past, but he made par, and sometimes a tie can feel like a victory. Early on, it didn’t appear that this match would go much past the midway portion of the second nine. Garcia had a hard time getting his game untracked, and he did not make his first birdie until the 14th hole. But Sergio being Sergio, he fought, and he wasn’t about to give anything to Morikawa, the world No. 2, who seemed to be in complete control after rebuilding his lead to 3 up with only five holes to play.

Garcia finally broke his birdie drought at the par-4 14th (8 feet) and got a longer putt to go at 15, where he knocked down a 30-footer. Garcia, seeking his 30th match victory in this event, was back in the match, 1 down, and drew even at the par-5 16th, making his third consecutive birdie. Key exchange at the par-3 17th: Garcia’s 18-footer for his fourth straight birdie stopped just short of the hole; Morikawa had to bear down on a 9-footer for par to keep the match tied.  

"If you would offer me a tie, a half on the 14th tee, I would have definitely taken it and walked, run to the clubhouse,” Garcia said. “Obviously, yeah, I got on a great run on 14, 15, 16, 17, and you can think, ‘What a shame,’ that I hit that putt on 17 just a tiny bit short right in the middle of the hole and he made a great par putt. But you've got to expect that he's going to make it. But it was a hard-played match, and I'm not going to lie, I'm happy with the half.”

Both players moved to 1-0-1.

JASON KOKRAK (1-1-0) def. ROBERT MACINTYRE (0-2-0), 3 and 2

Needing to win to keep alive in Group 2, Kokrak led throughout this match, though MacIntyre, the scrappy Scottish left-hander, was tough to shake. MacIntyre started slowly, making bogeys on two of his first three holes as Kokrak jumped to a 2-up advantage. Kokrak regained a 2-up edge with a birdie at the 12th – he made it the conventional way, laying up – and a par at the 15th hole, where MacIntyre bunkered his approach, was good enough to go 3 up. He closed out the match at 16 when both players made birdies.

Kokrak’s prize? He gets to take on Collin Morikawa, the second-ranked player in the world.

"Unbelievable ball-striker,” Kokrak said. “But if I hit it the way I did and a couple more putts roll in tomorrow, we'll be right there with him.”

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Why pro golf can't figure out match play - GolfDigest.com

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared as a newsletter to Golf Digest+ subscribers. To subscribe to Golf Digest+ for exclusive content and more, click here.

Bryson DeChambeau has loomed large in the collective golf psyche for the better part of a decade. In 2015, he became the fifth player to win the NCAA individual title and the U.S. Amateur in the same year. His single-length irons and math-heavy approach turned him into something of a phenom upon turning pro … until he reinvented himself with a bulk-up for the ages and a seminal U.S. Open victory. He is a headline machine, a lightning rod for controversy, among the biggest names in our sport, decked out in enough corporate logos to make a NASCAR driver envious.

The 49-year-old Englishman oscillated between the European Tour and the Challenge Tour before a late-career renaissance, winning his first event on the Old World circuit in his 478th try last May. A month later, his silky swing, Dad Bod and salt-and-pepper beard led the U.S. Open after two rounds. That he wore a hat from his home club in the U.K., absent a paid sponsor, only amplified the Cinderella vibes. He finished 50th, a reminder of how long 72 holes is, but a runner-up finish in Dubai in January has him ranked 60th in the world—good enough to qualify for his first World Golf Championship, this week’s Dell Technologies Match Play.

Bland and DeChambeau were drawn into the same group and will face-off Wednesday at Austin Country Club in golf’s mano-y-mano format. It’s a tantalizing matchup, a proper David vs. Goliath tilt, an archetype missing from the monotony of a stroke-play dominated world golf schedule. The emergence of an alternate tour—tours?—has spotlighted the repetitiveness of the PGA Tour slate, with seemingly all parties united in the belief that alternative formats would benefit the sport. So let’s add some more match play to the mix, right?

If only it were that simple. Consider the issues the lone yearly match-play event has had in generating interest and a compelling product. From 1999 through 2014, the event featured a single-elimination, 64-man bracket that was essentially copy-and-pasted from March Madness—four regions, with the four one seeds playing the 16 seeds in the first round, then the winner of the 8-9 matchup, etc. It produced early-round drama, but TV executives and corporate sponsors weren’t pleased when top stars were run out of town by a hot 14 seed on Wednesday afternoon. The format switched to its current iteration in 2015, with 16 four-man groups playing round robin and only the group’s top finisher advancing to the knockout rounds. This guaranteed the stars would play at least three rounds and gave them the opportunity to overcome a fluky loss yet still qualify for the single-elimination portion. The goal: high-quality, high-intensity weekend clashes between big-draw golfers.

It simply hasn’t materialized. Let’s start with the high-quality portion. Match-play golf depends on two vital ingredients: meaningful stakes and birdies. Ideally it’ll have both, but the presence of at least one is absolutely essential. Watching two golfers battle to make fewer bogeys than the other quickly becomes a snooze fest. Billy Horschel made exactly one birdie over 17 holes in winning last year’s championship match over Scottie Scheffler. When you have only two golfers playing at the end of a long week, these kind of duds can happen, and they’re virtually unwatchable.

Still, poor golf is palatable if the intensity is high—like at the Ryder Cup, where each session creates legitimate buzz because the players care deeply. It’s their one opportunity to represent a cause bigger than their own bank account or World Ranking, and each match counts for one point no matter the participants or hole-winning scores. The same is true for the NCAA team championship, or the U.S. Amateur, where life-changing exemptions into three major championships are at stake. The 2018 Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson showdown, which ushered in a recent influx of made-for-TV matches, overcame spotty golf because it featured the two best players of their generation, who are far from best friends, playing for $9 million dollars. Every player in this week’s WGC is doing fine financially, and each will leave Austin with a solid paycheck. This isn’t exactly career-defining stuff, and the player’s muted reactions speak to that. You won’t see anyone raising the roof or shotgunning beers this week.

Then there’s the quasi randomness of it all. Golf Twitter loves a good breakout performance, but the general public wants to watch the players it knows. In last year’s event, just one of the 16 top seeds advanced past the group stage. The finals featured Horschel and Scheffler. The other two men in the semis: Matt Kuchar, who did not post another top 10 all season; and Victor Perez, now No. 124 in the World Ranking.

This isn’t to denigrate match play; it’s simply to underscore the difficulty of implementing the format in modern professional golf. There is, after all, a reason the WGC-Dell Technologies stands alone.

Sam Burns is a big, hairy, American winning machine. The 25-year-old canned a 32-footer on the second playoff hole to defeat Davis Riley and successfully defend his Valspar Championship title. It’s his third victory in his last 22 starts, and the LSU grad leapfrogged Dustin Johnson to get to No. 10 in the World Rankings. DJ now sits at No. 11, the first time he’s been outside the top 10 in seven years. Rory McIlroy is now the oldest player in the top 10, and the average age of the top 10 golfers in the world is at an all-time low of 27.1 years old. The kids continue their takeover.

—A series of so-so results has Jon Rahm’s grasp on World No. 1 looking more tenuous than ever. Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay and Scottie Scheffler could each finish the week as the world’s top-ranked player. There’s more rankings drama further down the list, for every player inside the top 50 of the World Ranking come Monday gets into the Masters. The majority of those guys have already qualified, but there are a few who need to get in on their ranking and find themselves on the bubble: No. 48 Seamus Power, No. 50 Cameron Tringale, No. 54 Alex Noren and No. 60 Richard Bland.

—There’s an opposite-field event this week, which always produces a fun entry list. Those PGA Tour players outside the top 60ish in the World Ranking have the option of playing the Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship in the Dominican Republic, where Joel Dahmen will defend his title.

—The LPGA Tour is back stateside after a two-week Asian Swing with this week’s JTBC Classic at Aviara Golf Club outside San Diego. World No. 2 Nelly Korda will not play as she continues to recover from a blood clotshe announced on March 13. Jin Young Ko, the World No. 1 who has won six of her last 10 starts, will play on U.S. soil for the first time in 2022. Danielle Kang, Inbee Park, Lydia Ko, Minjee Lee, Lexi Thompson and Leona Maguire are also in the field.

—Shaun Norris, a 39-year-old South African, won his first DP World Tour title on Sunday on home soil, beating countryman Dean Burmester to win the Steyn City Championship outside Johannesburg. It was the rare occurrence when the top two ranked players in the field finished first and second on the leader board. The victory took Norris to No. 62 in the World Ranking, and a victory in this week’s Qatar Masters could see him qualify for the Masters.

—Carl Yuan became the third mainland Chinese player to win on the Korn Ferry Tour by edging former U.S. Amateur champion Peter Uihlein in a playoff for the Chitimacha Louisiana Open. The KFT stays in the Bayou state this week with the Lake Charles Championship.

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Why pro golf can't figure out match play - GolfDigest.com
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How to watch WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Day 2: PGA TOUR LIVE, ESPN+, live scores, tee times, TV times - PGA TOUR

The World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play continues Thursday from Austin Country Club.

Day 2 will feature group play once again, and among those competing are Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay, and Scottie Scheffler.

Here's everything you need to know to follow the action, including PGA TOUR LIVE and newly expanded and extended coverage on ESPN+. Click here for more details.

Scores

Full tee times

Bracket

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HOW TO FOLLOW

Television: Wednesday-Friday, 2 p.m.-8 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (Golf Channel), 2 p.m.-6 p.m. (NBC). Sunday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3 p.m.-7 p.m. (NBC)

Radio: Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m.-8 p.m. ET. Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio)

For outside of the U.S., click here for GOLFTV powered by the PGA TOUR

PGA TOUR LIVE

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How to watch WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Day 2: PGA TOUR LIVE, ESPN+, live scores, tee times, TV times - PGA TOUR
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Five matches to watch Thursday at WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play - PGA TOUR

AUSTIN, Texas -- A clash of styles. Two guys emerging in their mid-30s. Fire and … fire. Those are some of the storylines from five matches that caught our eye for Thursday’s second day of action at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play.

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RELATED: Tee times | Scoring | Match recaps from Wednesday

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Group 9: Bryson DeChambeau, USA, (9) vs. Lee Westwood, England, (47), 1:16 p.m.

A clash of styles and a matchup of the protagonists from the 2021 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, where DeChambeau came out on top. Westwood came into this week with 42 matches under his belt in this event (19-22-1) and went deep in 2012 (lost consolation match). Since the start of group play in 2015, he’s gotten out of his group once and lost playoffs to do so twice. The long-hitting DeChambeau is coming back from hand and hip injuries and admits he won’t be at full speed this week in his first TOUR start since late January. He has not made it out of pool play in two previous starts here.

Group 6: Justin Thomas, USA, (6) vs. Marc Leishman (37), Australia, 3:06 p.m.

Thomas could be building up to something, with top-10 finishes in four of his six starts in 2022. The only exceptions: a T20 at the Farmers Insurance Open, where he fell back with a rough weekend (73-74), and a T33 at THE PLAYERS, where he was on the wrong side of the draw but nonetheless authored a remarkable second-round 69 in the toughest conditions. He hasn’t made it out of pool play since finishing fourth in 2018. Leishman has made it out of pool play twice in his last four starts in this tournament but has never made the quarterfinals.   

Group 12: Billy Horschel, USA, (12) vs. Tom Hoge, USA, (33), 11:48 a.m. ET

In an era being defined by the twenty-somethings, Horschel and Hoge are peaking in their mid-30s. Horschel, the former FedExCup champ, is trending nicely after finishing second at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, T16 at The Honda Classic, and T6 at the WM Phoenix Open. He’s playing the best golf of his life after a 2021 that included wins in this event and the DP World Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship. So, too, is Hoge, fifth in the FedExCup after edging Jordan Spieth for his first TOUR win at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. That’s where the similarities end, though, as Hoge is making his first start here, whereas Horschel is the defending champ.  

Group 13: Tyrrell Hatton, ENG, (13) vs. Si Woo Kim, South Korea, (48), 12:32 p.m. ET

Hatton has advanced out of pool play in two of his last three starts in this tournament, compiling a 6-6-2 record going into Wednesday’s first round. If the cool weather and breezes persist, it may benefit him as he is best on difficult courses. Kim is an extravagant talent who became the youngest-ever winner of THE PLAYERS at 21. He’s streaky, though, and has emerged from pool play just once in four tries, only to lose 6 and 5 to Justin Thomas in 2018. Whatever happens, Hatton and Kim bear watching for not just their golf – they are two of the hottest-running players on TOUR.   

Group 2: Collin Morikawa, USA, (2) vs. Sergio Garcia, Spain, (43), 11:26 a.m. ET

The seeds suggest Morikawa is favored here, but seeds can be deceiving. In his one start in this event, last year, Morikawa had a week to forget, losing to Max Homa and eventual champion Billy Horschel. He tied J.T. Poston and didn’t emerge from group play. In short, one of the game’s most ascendant talents has yet to make his mark in Austin. Garcia, on the other hand, has built his career on match play. The Ryder Cup legend was 28-22-1 at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play coming into this week, tied for fourth in the category of most matches won. He finished fourth in 2010 and was a quarterfinalist in 2019 and ’21. The putter may be the difference between two of the game’s pre-eminent ball-strikers.

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Five matches to watch Thursday at WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play - PGA TOUR
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2022 WGC-Dell Match Play: Live stream, how to watch online, TV schedule, golf tee times, radio coverage - CBS Sports

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This week's 2022 WGC-Dell Match Play provides some of the most unique viewing experiences of the year with 32 matches in each of the first three days that set the table for a super Saturday, which will include 12 Round of 16 and quarterfinal matches from the hottest players of the week.

With nearly all of the top 50 players in the world in attendance -- this week's field is the second-best of the year behind only The Players Championship -- there will be loads of terrific matchups including pool play tilts involving Patrick Reed and Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa and Sergio Garcia, Viktor Hovland and Will Zalatoris, Dustin Johnson and Max Homa and Jordan Spieth and Adam Scott.

Austin Country Club is always a great venue for this event and, as many players have noted, a terrific match play golf course. The back nine coming home provides a lot of risk-reward shots, which should make for fun matches and great viewing throughout the week.

All times Eastern; streaming start times approximated

Pool Play – Wednesday

Round starts: 10:30 a.m.

PGA Tour Live (four streams): 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m. -- PGA Tour Live

Live TV coverage: 2-8 p.m. on Golf Channel
Live stream online: 2-8 p.m. on fuboTV (Try for free) and GolfChannel.com

Radio: 2-8 p.m. on PGA Tour Radio

Pool Play – Thursday

Round starts: 10:30 a.m.

PGA Tour Live (four streams): 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m. -- PGA Tour Live

Live TV coverage: 2-8 p.m. on Golf Channel
Live stream online: 2-8 p.m. on fuboTV (Try for free) and GolfChannel.com

Radio: 2-8 p.m. on PGA Tour Radio

Pool Play – Friday

Round starts: 10:30 a.m.

PGA Tour Live (four streams): 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m. -- PGA Tour Live

Live TV coverage: 2-8 p.m. on Golf Channel
Live stream online: 2-8 p.m. on fuboTV (Try for free) and GolfChannel.com

Radio: 2-8 p.m. on PGA Tour Radio

Round of 16 and Quarterfinals – Saturday

Round starts: 8:30 a.m.

PGA Tour Live (four streams): 8:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. -- PGA Tour Live
Early TV coverage: 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. on Golf Channel

Live TV coverage: 2-6 p.m. on NBC
Live simulcast: 2-6 p.m. on fuboTV (Try for free) and NBCSports.com

Radio: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. on PGA Tour Radio

Semifinals and Finals – Sunday

Round starts: 10 a.m.
Early TV coverage: 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. on Golf Channel

Live TV coverage: 3-7 p.m. on NBC
Live simulcast: 3-7 p.m. on fuboTV (Try for free) and NBCSports.com

Radio: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. on PGA Tour Radio

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2022 WGC-Dell Match Play: Live stream, how to watch online, TV schedule, golf tee times, radio coverage - CBS Sports
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Match recaps from Wednesday: WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play - PGA TOUR

The World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play is back. Wednesday’s opening round is the first of three days of group play. After Friday, the player with the best record in each of the 16 four-man pools will advance to knockout play (ties will be broken via sudden-death playoff). Two rounds apiece will be played Saturday and Sunday to crown a champion.

This is the only PGA TOUR event where players go mano-a-mano, and Austin Country Club is a perfect site for this format thanks to its offering of risk-reward holes.

Can stars like Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth return to their winning ways? How will Bryson DeChambeau fare in his return to competition?

Those are among the storylines we’ll be tracking this week.

There will be 32 matches in each of the next three days, and this file will be updated live at the conclusion of each match to keep you apprised of the action from the TOUR’s only match-play event. Return here often to learn about the latest upsets, comebacks and nail-biting finishes.

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Match recaps from Wednesday: WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play - PGA TOUR
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Paul Casey gets back spasms, concedes first-round match after two holes - Golf Channel

AUSTIN, Texas – Paul Casey was tied with Corey Conners through two holes on Day 1 at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play when he conceded the match. According to PGA Tour officials, Casey was suffering from back spasms and sought treatment.

Casey won the first hole with a par and had just lost the second when Conners holed out for eagle. According to ShotLink, the Englishman hit his drive at the third hole before conceding the match.

BY Golf Channel Digital  — March 23, 2022 at 12:45 PM

Here are the group standings for pool play at the 2022 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship in Austin, Texas.

Casey, who has finished second at this event twice, can still play the last two days of pool play and earn a spot in the weekend’s knockout rounds if he’s healthy enough.

According to a member of Casey’s management team he hopes to play Thursday. 

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Paul Casey gets back spasms, concedes first-round match after two holes - Golf Channel
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