GOLF/World Matchplay Championship: Perhaps it wasn't the final that everyone wanted, certainly it didn't do justice to the tournament's motto - the world is watching - but yesterday's Accenture World Matchplay Championship game had its charm.
Fittingly the final match was more about friendship than about reputations. Scott McCarron and Kevin Sutherland brought the amiability of journeymen professionals to their business and as they wended they way around 36 holes - McCarron led by one with six holes to play - they punctuated their progress with smiles and jokes and the chatter of old friends.
That and a reminiscence about their own history. They are both Californians and can both clearly recall playing each other for the North California High School Championship 20 years ago. That match is remembered more for the attire than the golf. Sutherland, a lanky spindle of a lad, wore a pair of shorts so small and tight apparently that, well, let's just say they hindered his swing. Fourteen years later when Sutherland joined the professional tour, McCarron mailed him a copy of a photo from that day along with a gentle injunction against ever showing up in those shorts again.
Sutherland, seeded 62 out of 64 players here, was certainly the surprise package but his play in eliminating players like Duval, McGinley, Furyk and Faxon was immaculate and he gives off the aura of being one of those players whose career is on a sudden upswing. Last year he made seven top 10 finishes, winning over $1.5 million, twice as much as he had ever won in a year before.
By then McCarron, who quit golf for four years after he left college (he worked in his father's golf clothing business during that time) had secured his third tour win.
Something about the opening 18, begun at seven in the morning, spoke of the character of both players. Sutherland played each of the first 11 holes in regulation. McCarron was more ambitious, more impatient. He made birdie at four to go one up and then gave away the advantage with a careless bogey at the fifth. Itching to take something out of the morning round, he repeated the trick half an hour later when he birdied the par five ninth and then bogeyed the tenth.
So it went, daylight never opening up between them, one mistake drawing another. When Sutherland at last made a birdie, it was the 12th hole and it was matched by McCarron. On the next Sutherland made a sloppy bogey to go one down again. By the break they were all square. McCarron made double bogey at 15 and then they swopped wins at 16 and 17. Relaxed faces and nervy golf.
One wondered if recent memories were spooking. Just a week previously McCarron had been given ample reason to doubt his own capabilities under pressure when he declined numerous chances to win the Nissan Open up the road at the Riviera Club in Los Angeles. Finally a wayward shot on the 18th had finished his afternoon in misery.
Nevertheless he did enough on what was considered by tour standards a lacklustre portion of this year's tour, to be in line yesterday for a $500,000 bonus as King of the West Coast Swing. On top of the $1 million first prize at La Costa it meant that McCarron (36) was playing for the biggest pay day of his life. Losing to Sutherland would give him a mere $555,000.
This week, though, he played like an angel and his defeat of close friend Paul Azinger in Saturday's semi-final stage gave spectators a glimpse of tour life beyond TigerWorld. Beaten on the 18th, Azinger put McCarron into a headlock and rubbed his head vigourously, an affectionate gesture for one of the tour's amiable journeymen.
The future of the Matchplay championship itself was under discussion last night though most observers agreed it would survive in some form or other. The PGA Tour are negotiating with the new owners of La Costa to keep the tournament there for several years more but voices among the players suggest that another west coast venue might be more attractive.
David Toms summed up several players' feeling when he noted that for matchplay maybe it's not as exciting as some other places. There are not a lot of risk rewards out there. Risk rewards? Talk to the network TV people about that.
