Accenture Match Play Championship

The Accenture Match Play Championship started yesterday and is part of the World Golf Championships which are a group of four annual events for male professional golfers representing all major professional tours. WGCs rank below the four majors but above all other competitive tournaments, in stature.

This tournament is different than any other tournament in the PGA Tour schedule as it is match play whereas every other event is stroke play. Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponent. In case of a tie on a hole it is considered a halve. This is the basic description of the scoring system and it gets a little complicated at times but I will explain it further in later posts.

I was able to watch a majority of the coverage yesterday and this is a round-up of what happened

-Tiger lost on the 19th hole. He was a number one seed and lost to the 16th seed. This has happened before and is not as rare as say a number 1 losing to a 16 in the NCAA tourny, but still he should have won and this is pretty disappointing for Tiger fans.

-The other number one seeds (Phil Mickleson, Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer) all won big.

-My second favorite player, Ian Poulter also lost.

-There was a record 9 matches that went to extra holes.

All in all it was good day to watch golf. It is kind of like the first round of the NCAA tourny, just a lot of matches going on and a lot of action.

The tournament took place at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, Dove Mountain in Marana, AZ. Anyone live near here? It is just outside of Tuscon. Here's a few pictures of the desert course.