By Shane Ryan
AUSTIN — The most exciting Friday in golf is imminent, and while the WGC-Dell Matchplay has given us plenty of drama through two days of group play—15 of 32 matches went to the 18th hole on Thursday—almost everything is up for grabs on Friday as the round-robin portion ends and players jockey for spots in the 16-man knockout round. Only the group winners will make it through to the weekend, so let’s take a quick look around the 16 groups and see what’s happened, where things stand and what we can expect on Friday.

Group 1: Everybody was dying to see Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed on Friday, us included, and ideally at 2-0. But this is the Match Play, the most volatile event on the planet, so of course Reed went 0-2 and is already eliminated. Rahm, though, looks indomitable at 2-0 and now controls his own destiny; only a loss to Reed opens the door for Cameron Young and Sebastian Munoz.

Group 2: Sergio Garcia’s ridiculous comeback and even more ridiculous rescue shot on 18 to steal a tie against Morikawa turned this group topsy-turvy:

There’s no quit in @TheSergioGarcia.

Garcia wins 3 of the last 5 holes to earn a tie in his match against Collin Morikawa. pic.twitter.com/Dxn1iOBYIP

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 24, 2022

There are too many brain-bending scenarios here, so let’s just leave it at the fact that Garcia and Morikawa are tied atop the group and have the inside track on Friday.

Group 3: Viktor Hovland is a man possessed! His first win was 1 up over fellow Euro Sepp Straka, and he did one better against Cameron Tringale Thursday, prevailing 2 and 1. Will Zalatoris delivered the hammer blow to Tringale on Wednesday, but his 4-and-2 loss to Straka on Day 2 means Hovland is in “destiny control” mode. Win or draw, and he’s through.

Group 4: This group, so far, belongs to Seamus Power. Are you noticing a theme here? It’s a European romp! Revenge for the Ryder Cup! OK, not really, but Power has arguably been the most dominant player in any group with two 5-and-4 wins, and if he plays the 15th hole Friday, it’ll be the first time.

Group 5: In a group with last year’s runner-up Scottie Scheffler, match-play legend Ian Poulter and former Ryder Cup darling Tommy Fleetwood, you’d hate to be the fourth guy … unless you are Matt Fitzpatrick. The young Englishman is absolutely cursed at the Ryder Cup but is on a rampage here. He’s already bludgeoned Fleetwood and Poulter, and if he can complete the treble with a win against Scheffler Friday, it’ll be one of the really surprising runs in the tournament’s group-play era.

Group 6: All you need to know here is that Kevin Kisner is a certified match-play killer and continues to pursue his MO of “being really annoying.” Trailing Luke List 2-down at 14 on Thursday, he tied the match in two holes, made a clutch birdie putt on 16, and broke List’s heart with a final birdie on 18 to steal it 1 up. Now, Kisner faces Justin Thomas in a win-or-draw scenario, but Thomas and List are both still alive if he falters.

Group 7: This really, really seemed like Xander Schauffele’s group, and it still might be, but after beating Takumi Kanaya, he got out-dueled by Lucas Herbert, who’s now 2-0 and controls his fate. And by the way, if you expected this tournament to jolt Tony Finau out of his mini-slump, it didn’t—he’s 0-2 and has looked just this side of woeful. That’s not Herbert’s problem, but Kanaya? He might be:

2DN
1DN
TIE
1UP

Takumi Kanaya has flipped the script on Tony Finau heading to 18. pic.twitter.com/awx39mweh9

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 24, 2022

Group 8: Is Dustin Johnson ever going to lose another match? After becoming only the third player to go 5-0 at the Ryder Cup in the current format, he’s won two in a row at the Match Play, and the victories weren’t particularly close (3 and 2, 4 and 2). Max Homa could spoil his streak on Friday and propel himself and Mackenzie Hughes into playoff position, but at this point? Don’t bet on it.

Group 9: It’s a battle of graying Brits: Richard Bland, 49, vs. Lee Westwood, 48. If Bland wins, he’s through. If Westwood wins, he’s got at least a playoff. As Bland himself joked on Tuesday, there may be an ambulance following them. Assuming they both survive, though, one of them could become the oldest player to make the round of 16. Meanwhile, Bryson DeChambeau is eliminated because this happened on the 18th against Westwood:

A wild finish to a thrilling match.@WestwoodLee finishes eagle-birdie-par to win his match 1UP against Bryson DeChambeau. pic.twitter.com/96ZlKm5KXR

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 24, 2022

Group 10: This group has been defined by Paul Casey withdrawing twice, handing walkover wins to Alex Noren and Corey Conners because of a bad back, and both also have beaten Louis Oosthuizen. All of which sets up a Noren-Conners Friday showdown, and,look, if you tell me that Canada is about to face Sweden … well, I’m hoping you’re talking about Olympic hockey. Curling in a pinch. But this is almost as good. Almost.

Group 11: One of the more mind-blowing stats in this tournament is that Keegan Bradley has now gone 14 matches without a win. However! He did manage to make a birdie on 18 to tie Adam Scott, which kept Scott at 1-0-1 and left Jordan Spieth and Justin Rose with a prayer. The Spieth-Scott match is one of the on-paper highlights of Friday, right up there with Kisner-Thomas.

Did it ever not look like a 3?@JordanSpieth makes par the hard way.

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 24, 2022

Group 12: You already know about Billy Horschel—he’s now won seven straight matches in Austin, counting last year’s championship run, and he’s barely had to break a sweat. That should change Friday, when Thomas Pieters, who looked extremely good until he handed his match to Min Woo Lee, waits with a chance to force a playoff. This will be Horschel’s hardest fight of the week so far, and another test of whether he’s actually invincible.

Group 13: This is a little bit of a dull group, and it’s good that the spiciest figure, Tyrrell Hatton, is the man sitting at 2-0 heading into Friday’s match with Daniel Berger. That’s the one match we wanted to see with some stakes in play, and Berger still has a crack.

Group 14: As the last man in the field, Maverick McNealy stunned Joaquin Niemann with an absolute walloping on Wednesday, winning 8 and 6 in one of the most lopsided results ever at this event. He seemed to be coasting against Kevin Na on Thursday, but for the second straight day, Na reversed a 3-down deficit, this time finishing with a tie. All of which makes for a complicated Friday, but we’ll give the edge to McNealy, who has the advantage of playing 0-2 Russell Henley, the only player in the group eliminated and we suspect his motivation is running pretty low.

Group 15: Abraham Ancer lost a 1-up lead to Brian Harman on the 18th hole Thursday and had to settle for a tie. But with a 1-0-1 record, he still has the slight edge on the group when he faces Webb Simpson Friday.

Group 16: Finally, this is the Brooks Koepka group, and we got what we wanted: a Koepka-Shane Lowry Friday match that will likely decide the group winner (although Harold Varner III is not out of it yet). Root for Koepka if you want, but we have to advise you: Win or lose, don’t ask for his autograph.

The post Frantic Friday approaches at Match Play, and here’s where all 16 groups stand appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

On a psychological level, though, what are the secrets to putting the stroke play mentality behind and transitioning into a more combative, mano-a-mano mindset? Should there be a transition, or should playing against one person feel the same as competing against a 149-man blob? This week at the WGC-Dell MatchPlay, a few players attempted to answer a question that is harder than it might first seem.

“In matchplay, it’s important to take the lead and be the one who sets the pace so you don’t have to react to what he is doing,” said Jon Rahm, appearing before the media on Tuesday morning. “I don’t see ranking. I don’t see history. All that goes out the window.”

When Rahm says “set the pace,” he’s not just referring to making more birdies and playing better, but to understanding situationally when it’s time to put the crunch on an opponent. He spoke specifically of the privilege of having/grabbing “honours.” When you win a hole and then hit first on the next, it creates its own kind of momentum that continues by finding the fairway, keeping the pressure on and maybe inspiring a kind of despair in your opponent … to the point that, as Rahm said, “you’re not giving him time to breathe.”

Scottie Scheffler made the point that even though his preparation is the same before the event, he takes a completely different approach mentally when the matches start. He didn’t elaborate on the nature of those changes, but Kevin Kisner brought up the idea that the actual score and even the quality of play doesn’t matter—at least not as much.

“I don’t care what we shoot,” said the 2019 WGC-MatchPlay champion and the 2018 runner-up. “I’m just trying to beat you.”

Kisner also delved into an underrated skill that pays massive dividends in matchplay: adaptability.

“You have to be ready to change throughout the match,” he said. “I think that’s one of the biggest things. Normally in a stroke-play event I kind of have the same mindset for all 18 holes. … I know how I want to attack the golf course from the get-go, but added features [of matchplay] are if someone’s in trouble or someone’s played aggressive, I may have to change strategy on the go. So I think there’s a huge, different dynamic one-on-one versus 72-hole stroke play against 150 others.”

As Justin Thomas noted, though, it’s possible to go too far in the opposite direction, with a hyper-focus on one opponent that can become a detriment.

“Something I’ve struggled with in the past is looking too much at maybe other matches or worrying about what else is going on or playing to my opponent too much,” said Thomas, who has become a reliable match-play golfer for U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams in recent years. “Sometimes I feel like I try to change my game plan or do something different, and that’s something that I’ve struggled with. I think that’s why I haven’t played well.”

For Thomas, the same applies to the on-course adjustments, and the extent to which you should react to an error by your opponent. “If I have a wedge in my hand, and he misses the green, I shouldn’t all of a sudden like try to hit it to 20 feet,” Thomas said. “Like if I have a wedge in my hand, I’m trying to make a birdie because that’s when I end up hitting it to 20 feet and then he maybe holes a bunker shot or hits it close, and then I either lose the hole or we halve the hole, and the next thing I know I get to the next tee, like, What was I doing?, like I should have tried to make birdie there.”

At the same time, Thomas does adapt a more combative mindset when it’s time for matchplay, and admitted that he hopes every opponent “plays the worst round of golf they’ve ever played in their lives.”

“It’s a fine line,” Jordan Spieth said on Monday. “You don’t want to really get too focused on what [the opponent] is doing, but you do kind of need to be aware so that you limit a mistake that doesn’t need to be made.”

Matchplay can be liberating—a result of the fact that a poor shot can’t cost you an entire tournament—but Spieth pointed out that even this freedom can be a mixed bag as it comes with its own unique kind of pressure.

“You feel a lot of freedom on shots that you don’t in a regular tournament because you’re like, Hey, if I don’t pull this off, whatever. If I lose this hole, it’s one hole,” he said. “But at the same time closing out matches a lot of times can feel like the pressure of closing out a tournament. So it’s kind of a little bit like you get freedom on some, but then on others you kind of feel a little tighter and that’s kind of the beauty of it. I wish there were more events like this.”

For Viktor Hovland, the key word when it comes to matchplay is “reset.” As in, have a very short memory when things go bad, because when a match is just 18 holes vs. 72, mistakes can compound.

“Even though every single shot and hole matters in stroke play, now you only have 18 holes and it puts more emphasis on every single hole you play,” Hovland said, “because you don’t get that many holes.”

Not everybody loves matchplay, but for Hovland, a former U.S. Amateur champ who also helped Oklahoma State win an NCAA team title in matchplay in 2018, the constant shifts are part of the appeal, and he knows how to use the swings in his favour. “I just like the kind of the short-memory span you have in matchplay and how you can take advantage of the momentum that you get through certain stretches.”

Shane Bevel
Hovland’s success in matchplay includes a U.S. Amateur victory in 2018 and helping Oklahoma State win the NCAA team title earlier that year (shown).

None of this is easy to define, or explain, and the question of what makes a player good at matchplay is one we’ll be attempting to answer as long as the format exists. The thoughts offered by these players, though, almost paint a picture in relief—you can see the contours, and that at least gives you the shape of the problem.

It’s also what makes it so intriguing, and so timeless. To excel at matchplay is to solve a riddle, but one that can be asked a thousand different ways. Momentum, aggression and strategic intelligence are part of the formula, but in the end there’s something even more subtle that the best players master. It’s our good luck that even if they have trouble explaining it, the results of their genius are easy to see, and a joy to appreciate.

As Spieth said: Let’s have some more.

The post How do you master a ‘matchplay mentality’? Top tour pros answer a complicated question appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.