Match play tourney needs tinkering

By DOUG FERGUSON

AP Golf Writer

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – When the Match Play Championship began three years ago, a couple of wags went so far as to call it the best new tournament since Bobby Jones started an invitational at his new golf course in Augusta, Ga.

This time around, it more closely resembled a “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf” exhibition, with a few notable exceptions.

At least those matches featured marquee players.

And the gallery was bigger.

OK, so the pay was better. And it counted. Just ask Steve Stricker, who now has a $1 million lead over Tiger Woods on the PGA Tour money list and watched his world ranking go from No. 91 to No. 47.

Still, the week Down Under went as feared.

Most of the talk focused on who wasn’t at Metropolitan Golf Club (Woods, most notably). Worse yet, a lucrative World Golf Championship event became nothing more than an afterthought in the world of sports.

In America, it was dwarfed by Oklahoma winning the national championship and the NFL playoffs. Even in Australia, it played second-fiddle to the Aussies sweeping the West Indies in cricket.

The galleries were sparse, and sometimes confused. When Brad Faxon and Pierre Fulke were all square after 18 holes in the quarterfinals, television insisted the first extra hole be No. 14, causing hundreds of fans to wait on the first tee and watch the grass grow.

By Saturday, tournament officials gave each volunteer two tickets with hopes of getting enough people to fill the bleachers, or at least surround every green.

“It’s important to recognize that we have 64 of the top players in the world here,” PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said. “They are playing exceptional golf. We obviously don’t want to mask the fact that we are disappointed that we did not attract some of the players that didn’t come.”

Obviously.

Scheduling the Match Play Championship halfway around the world the week after Christmas invited disaster. The defections started with Woods and trickled all the way down to Steve Elkington – an Australian, no less – at No. 101 in the world ranking.

“I didn’t think coming to Australia was a bad idea. It was a good idea,” Finchem said. “I think coming this week was a bad idea. We underestimated the impact on the long season, which has been made longer by our own efforts.”