March Madness (Golf Style): World’s Best Get Last Prep For The Masters

While you pine over your busted brackets for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, it’s time to give golf a whirl as the PGA Tour’s version of March Madness begins on Wednesday in Austin, Texas with the WGC Match Play Championship.

Austin Country Club is the familiar setting for this event, although last year’s competition was wiped out by the pandemic.  This is the one for those who clamor for a match play event for the Tour.  This isn’t exactly like basketball, however.

The world’s top 64 players were on the invite list but there’s no Tiger Woods, no Brooks Koepka (out after surgery), no Adam Scott, no Gary Woodland and no Justin Rose.  Take heart, you will have world’s No. 1 Dustin Johnson as the top seed.  Players champion Justin Thomas, now ranked second, is the No. 2 seed followed by Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa.

Ian Poulter, Erik Van Rooyen, Adam Long, J.T. Poston and Dylan Fritelli were the last players in, taking the place of Koepka and the rest who didn’t enter.

The field will be divided into 16 “Groups” with players ranked first through 16th heading those groups.  There are four players in each group and they play round-robin matches within those groups on Wednesday and Thursday.  Players get a point for a win and a half-point for a halved match.  The group play insures that every player will have at least three matches and prevents the chaos of pure match play where you would lose half the field on the first day.

Leading point getters in each group make it to the Sweet Sixteen.  The round robin matches go Wednesday through Friday.  On Saturday morning, the final 16 play and eight move on to the afternoon quarterfinals to produce the final four.

Those final four players square off on Sunday morning with the finals and third-place matches on Sunday afternoon.

Driver-crushing, rules-arguing, Kyle Berkshire-admiring, four-iron-cracking, tee shot-topping, U.S. Open-winning, distance-obsessed Bryson DeChambeau, who has become Mr. Entertainment on the PGA Tour, will once again be the man who attracts a huge amount of attention.  DeChambeau is now fifth in the world rankings followed by Xander Schauffele, Patrick Reed, Tyrrell Hatton, Patrick Cantlay and Webb Simpson.

The big question remains — who exactly is the favorite in this match play format?

Based on his form at The Players, it might be J.T.  Dustin Johnson has struggled a bit lately but struggling for D.J. is decent play for most.  Still, he’s looking to sharpen things up with The Masters just two weeks away.

The last time this event was played was 2019 when Kevin Kisner emerged as the champion, beating Matt Kuchar in the finals.  Kisner has played well this season, Kuchar has not.

There are 22 new faces in the field.  Tour Ironman Sungjae Im is one of them.  Im has played well and it seems like he plays well every week.  Im has become on of the Tour’s most consistent performers and jumped into the big spotlight with his tie for second at last year’s Masters.  Viktor Hovland, Morikawa, Matt Wolff and thin-man Will Zelatoris are among the first timers in this week’s field of 64.

So who has the edge?

That’s the issue — in match play, you never know.

Groups, Brackets and Tee Times for WGC-Match Play: