Golf: Tiger Woods successfully defended his Accenture Matchplay Championship in California last night with a 3 and 2 victory over Davis Love III while Darren Clarke claimed third place with a two holes win over Australia's Stephen Leaney.

Woods twice trailed Love by two holes in the 36-hole final at La Costa, but crucially birdied the final hole of the morning round to go into lunch just one down.

In fact, Woods had little time for lunch as he headed for the practice range to try and sort out his errant driving, and although he was still occasionally wayward from the tee, his iron play eventually put him in a commanding position.

A bogey from Love on the 20th hole allowed Woods back on level terms, and the world number one went in front for the first time with a stunning birdie on the seventh.

Another poor drive left him almost in the same spot as during the morning round, but this time he was far enough away from the trees to have a shot to the green and blasted an amazing recovery to 12 feet and holed the putt for birdie.

That took him into the lead for the first time in the match and he went two ahead on the next with another birdie from four feet.

A par four was good enough to win the ninth and make it three holes in a row, and at three up with nine to play Woods controlled the back nine to win on the 16th and claim the $1.2million first prize and take his earnings from World Golf Championship (WGC) events to a staggering $10million.

The world number one has now won nine of the 16 events he has entered since their inception in 1999.

He is the only player to win all four of the WGC's annual events, having completed the clean sweep here 12 months ago. Clarke, the winner in 2000 and 2003 NEC Invitational champion, is the only other player to have won more than one WGC title.

After the first 18 holes there was little to separate the two, with Love ahead by one and also the better player in the matter of holes conceded. Woods, wild off the tee, had not completed four holes to Love's three at the halfway stage and, although both players had five birdies in the match, it was rather like one of those sub-standard FA Cup finals where neither team plays to expectation.

There was even an element of farce at the 14th, where both were nicely on the green in two, putting for birdies. But Woods ran his first putt four feet past and missed the one back, while Love not only did likewise but ran the four-footer three feet by and had to hole that to prevent a four-putt.

Against that, they did manage to play the short 16th like the number one and number five in the world. Woods pitched his tee-shot inches from the hole but saw it spin back 10 feet.

Love, on the other hand, finished only 18 inches from the pin, for a tap-in winning birdie.

There is no player among the world's best more likely to miss a short putt than Love, whose ability to strike the ball beautifully is sometimes let down by his flakiness under pressure from inside five feet.