Appreciating match play for what it is

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- The seeds look like lotto numbers -- 24, 19, 55, 62. They belong to the first four winners of the Match Play Championship, a fascinating tournament that starts with high expectations and usually ends with a lot of questions.

Who are these guys? How did they win a World Golf Championship event against the top 64 players on the planet?

And what happened to Tiger Woods and the other top seeds?

The credit -- or the blame -- goes to match play, golf's most fickle format that has provided great theater and a few unlikely champions in its brief history.

No. 24 would be Jeff Maggert, whose only previous victory had come under the lights at Disney World in 1993.

No. 19 was Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland, who earned more fame for beating Tiger Woods in 2000 than anything he has ever done in Europe.

A year later, the lot fell to Steve Stricker at No. 55, winning in Australia when 28 top players didn't even bother to show up.

The latest winner of golf's most unpredictable tournament was Kevin Sutherland, the No. 62 seed who hit only 10 of 28 fairways in the final match to claim a 1-up victory over Scott McCarron for the first victory of his career.

After the morning round of their 36-hole match, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem hardly looked concerned about the format -- or surprised at who was still playing.

"You ever watch ice skating?" he said. "There are always two or three who are really, really good. And there are other skaters who fall down all the time, even though they are the top 15 or 16 in the Olympic games. That's the way golf used to be.

"You could tee it up in match play, and Bobby Jones would beat everybody," he said. "In today's world, with so many good players, the difference between No. 1 and No. 64 -- or even No. 100 -- is not great. And it's certainly not that great over one day."

Indeed, the only ones complaining about a No. 62 vs. No. 45 in the finals were those expecting Woods and Phil Mickelson to breeze into the finals.

Woods has only been there once in three tries. Mickelson has never made it past the third round. Those are the top two players in the world ranking. They were the top two seeds in this Match Play Championship.

They were gone after one day, never even making it to the 18th hole.

"Over four rounds, over 20 weeks, you start to see a little spread where guys are more consistent," Finchem said. "We need to accept, to take match play for what it is."

Does that mean a lesser-known player deserves less credit?

All Sutherland did was make clutch birdie putts on the final two holes and then beat David Duval in 20 holes, then dispatch of Paul McGinley, Jim Furyk, PGA champion David Toms and Brad Faxon. Only one of those matches -- Faxon -- reached the 18th green. He played 122 holes and made 10 bogeys, only one of those on the final day.

"This has 64 of the best players in the world, and everybody showed up that was not hurt," Sutherland said.

Woods was certainly prophetic when he studied the brackets the day before the Accenture Match Play Championship began and declared, "It's anyone's tournament to win."

The week at La Costa Resort began with Woods, Mickelson, Duval and Sergio Garcia leading a star-studded field from around the world. It ended with two guys from Sacramento with three PGA Tour victories between them.

One of them was McCarron who was asked after three days where all the stars had gone in this World Golf Championship event.

"They guys who are left are playing the best in the world now," McCarron said. "These are your marquee players. I don't care who they are."

The other five official WGC events that have been played since their inception in 1999 have been won by Tiger Woods (four times) and Mike Weir.

Woods' victims were Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Miguel Angel Jimenez and nobody -- he won the NEC Invitational two years ago by 11 shots. Weir won at Valderrama against Lee Westwood, Vijay Singh, Garcia and Woods.

All of the top names rarely make it to the finals of a match-play event, especially when the first five rounds are contested over 18 holes. As the first four years have shown, it might be just as rare for any of them to make it.

"People instinctively like to see a dominant situation evolve, like the Yankees, Cowboys, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods," Finchem said. "In match play, I just don't see it."

What he has seen is a fascinating tournament with no guarantees, with 10-footers than mean something every day, and not just on Sunday.

Finchem said he filled out a bracket during the first few years of the Match Play Championship, trying to predict who among 64 to players might make it to Sunday.

How did he fare?

"Give me a break," Finchem replied. "Who can win that game?"