Orlando, Florida ….
Rio Olympic Gold and Silver winners, Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson have opted out of teeing-up in next week’s lucrative WGC – Dell Match-Play Championship in Austin, Texas citing the event not to be ideal for their Masters preparations.
It is the second straight year Rose will not compete and a third year in succession, and since the event moved to the Texas capital in 2016, that Stenson will not be a part of the elite 64-player field.
Both leading Europeans cite the revamped format of the event as not condusive to their Masters winning goal, and with year’s first Major a fortnight after the Texas tournament.
The format of the $10m event was changed in 2015 from a straight knock-out to pool play, with 16 groups of four players playing round-robin matches, on Wednesday through to Friday. The top 16 seeded players are allocated to the 16 groups, one in each group. The remaining 48 players are placed into three pools (seeds 17–32, seeds 33–48, seeds 49–64). Each group has one player randomly selected from each pool to complete the group.
All group play matches are limited to 18 holes with one point awarded for a win and one-half point for a halved match. Ties for first place in a group are broken by a sudden-death stroke-play play-off.
The winners of each group then advance to a single-elimination bracket on the weekend, with the round of 16 and quarter-finals on Saturday, and the semi-finals, finals, and consolation match on Sunday.
However, you can have the situation like last year when Rory McIlroy lost his first round match to Dane Soren Kjeldsen and a second match to American Gary Woodland and thus leaving McIlroy and Argentina’s Emiliano Grillo to fight it out for a virtual ‘nothing counts’ third round match and with no hope of either advancing to the last 16.
Instead, Rose is opting to contest the following week’s Houston Open and where a year ago he shot a first round 67 on route to a share of 15th place.
“I just feel like playing the match-play would give me any feedback and while it is a fun event, it is only two weeks out from the Masters and I do feel like 72 holes of stroke-play a week later in Houston is more invaluable to me than what could only be three rounds of match-play in Austin,” said Rose.
“In the last two years I have played Houston I have been close to winning and in my mind I want to play the Houston Open and having elected to tee-up this week at Bay Hill something had to give and it is next week’s Match-Play.
“I didn’t play in Austin last year and to be honest, I don’t like the new format as you can play well for three days and go home and get nothing out of it or play terrible for three days and wish you’d lost your first match.”
Stenson will join Rose in Houston having finished runner-up in American’s fourth largest city in both 2013 and 2016.
“For me, it’s a combination of the timing of the Match-Play and also the format,” said Stenson.
“I preferred the earlier format a little better where if you lost your first round match you were out whereas now you could be playing a ‘dead rubber’ match that counts for nothing in the bigger picture of the tournament.
