It can be difficult to ask a golfer if he’s “sad” about something, which is why it was so nice that Jon Rahm said it first.

“It’s too bad that this is the last edition of this tournament,” the World No. 2 said on Tuesday about the WGC-Dell Match Play. “I obviously love matchplay, so I’m hoping maybe it’s just a one-year deal and we get a matchplay event back on the schedule.”

Rahm has made it out of his group in three of his five Match Play attempts, and went as far as the final in 2017, when he lost 1 up to Dustin Johnson. He also holds a 4-3-1 Ryder Cup record that includes an iconic singles win against Tiger Woods in 2018, so it’s no surprise that he loves matchplay and looks forward to coming to Austin every year.

“As a player it’s just an opportunity to play kind of a different golf,” he said. “It’s really the only time throughout the year besides maybe the Ryder Cup where you’re playing truly against the person in front of you, which is much more relatable to every sport we play in the world … it’s a lot more aggressive. You see more birdies. You see a lot of things happen.”

Rahm is not alone. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who made his first WGC-Match Play final in 2021 before winning last year, called Austin one of his favorite places to come each year, and the Texas alum took a predictably plainspoken approach to the appeal of the format.

“I like the simplicity of it,” he said. “All you have to do is just go out there and try and beat the guy that’s in front of you and if you don’t, you lose, and if you beat him, you win.”

This is the final year of the WGC at Austin Country Club, and almost certainly the last event of the WGC era. Austin Country Club apparently asked the tour for more money, which was met with resistance at headquarters, and it wasn’t long before the situation deteriorated beyond repair. There is no matchplay event on the schedule for the 2024 season, and despite signs that the tour is looking to bring it back at a later date, there are currently no firm plans.

Billy Horschel shakes hands with Scottie Scheffler after winning 2 and 1 in the final of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in 2021. Michael Reaves

The Match Play started in 1999 at La Costa in Carlsbad, California, moved to Dove Mountain in Tucson in 2009, was played one year at Harding Park in San Francisco, and has been in Austin the last six years. It was a single-elimination event until going to a round-robin format in 2015.

“I would love to see there still be a matchplay event at some point,” Rickie Fowler said, explaining that he liked single elimination better than the current set-up. “Matchplay, other than what we see in team events, it’s fun. We obviously wouldn’t want it every week, just because of how volatile it is, and it’s not always the guy that’s playing the best that week .. but yeah, I love match play.”

Fowler points to his 6-and-5 victory against Phil Mickelson in the second round in 2011 as his fondest memory of the Match Play.

“Phil and I were a lot closer then because we spent a lot of time both playing practice rounds and games together, and it was fun to get the better of him that day,” he said, with a sly smile.

As to the why of matchplay’s appeal, for most of the players it came down to variety and for the chance to square off against a single opponent — which, in turn, allowed them to play in a slightly different way.

“When I play good, I make a lot of birdies, which is good for match play,” Min Woo Lee said. “Sometimes if your playing partner doesn’t hit a great shot, you had an advantage, but it is also nice stepping up on a tee and smoking a drive and putting the pressure on … I feel like it suits my game because it’s a pretty aggressive type of play.”

Victor Perez pointed out the way in which the format actually takes some of the conservative strategy out of play.

“I think matchplay sometimes pushes you to the edge because it’s very black or white, to where the equation is made up for you,” he said. “It’s either like, well, you hit it to six feet so I don’t need to play any kind of percentage or try to be smart or anything … I try to play more the shot and like man to man.”

The players who spoke on Tuesday were universal in their enjoyment of matchplay, but understood its drawbacks, both for the competitors and from a corporate angle. On the playing side, luck plays an enormous role in determining the winner — you can play great and lose, or play poorly and win — and a more consistent style of player won’t find it as easy to register a high finish. (The current format, as Rahm pointed out, can lead to some confusion, as when a player might have to face someone he already defeated in a playoff in order to advance.) On the corporate side, any format dictates a dwindling field over the weekend, which can lead to dead time on television and lower appeal for sponsors who count on big weekend fields for clients.

For these players, though, the good outweighed the bad, and there was a certain regret, with maybe even a tinge of melancholy, at the prospect of this tournament coming to an end. Rahm, remembering years when he played well but didn’t advance, and other years when he didn’t feel in top form but managed to beat those in front of him, summed up the strangeness and appeal of the format best.

“That’s the beauty of matchplay,” he said.

These golfers, and many others, hope to see it again.

The post In Austin, players reflect on the last WGC-Dell Match Play with a tinge of sadness appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
AUSTIN — Following his 3-and-2 loss to Bubba Watson in the semifinals of the WGC-Dell Match Play on Sunday, Justin Thomas made it clear the imminent prospect of becoming the No. 1 golfer in the world—he needed to beat Bubba to make it happen—was not an excuse for the result. Thomas made bad shots, burned the edges on his putts, Bubba played well and, etc. etc. But he also showed an unusual degree of honesty when asked by the AP’s Doug Ferguson whether he was more upset about losing the match, or his chance grab the label of the planet’s best golfer.

“I haven’t had such a hard time not thinking about something so much,” Thomas said. And if that sentiment was a little difficult to parse at first, what he said next brooked no ambiguity:

“And that really sucked. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to be perfectly honest.”

The response was stunning in its understated way, not because of the content (which was completely understandable) but because it actually came out of JT’s mouth. Ninety-eight percent of golfers, in the same situation and regardless of the truth, would have answered with a series of cliches: “I was focused on my match against Bubba Watson. The No. 1 ranking would have been nice, but that’s not what I was thinking about out there. I’m disappointed to lose this match, and the chance to win the tournament. If I play well, the ranking will take care of itself.”

Thomas’ forthright answer is rare, and it leads to a tricky situation. There will be at least a few stories with a headline like this one, honing in on that one reply. Thomas may eventually decide that it would have been easier to lie—to give the media boilerplate and snuff the oxygen out of the story. But I hope he doesn’t, because this is more interesting, and more human, and more relatable. (In his shoes, who wouldn’t have been thinking about attaining the top world ranking?)

Related: Jordan Spieth’s confidence is being tested on eve of the Masters

This, of course, is a very minor tragedy in what has been a stellar career for the 24-year-old. In the past year, he’s gone from the butt of jokes about being Jordan Spieth’s sidekick to establishing himself as a major winner and one of the best players alive. And Sunday’s chance at the No. 1 ranking was not do-or-die—he will inch that much closer tomorrow, and the threshold for what he needs to summit the peak will be even smaller when he tees it up at Augusta in two weeks. If 20 years pass and he never gets this close again, we may look at today as his “Phil at the U.S. Open” moment, but based on the way he’s playing, that seems very doubtful.

Nevertheless, Thomas was downcast as he walked up the 16th fairway. And after Bubba warned the spectators behind the green to pay attention (“we’re gonna play some golf here!”). And after Thomas dropped a long birdie putt to preserve some very faint hope (he could barely muster the joy to acknowledge the cheers). And after Bubba snuffed it out with a birdie of his own to close thing out, Thomas proceeding zombie-like through the TV and radio interviews.

Here’s the entirety of his post-match appearance on PGA Tour radio:

Q. One of those days when you try to make a putt there when it doesn’t mean anything. Tough day out there for you?
JUSTIN THOMAS: Yeah, just didn’t play very well. And Bubba played really well. So that’s a pretty bad combination in match play.

Q. Good luck this afternoon [in the third-place match].
JUSTIN THOMAS: Thank you.

A few feet away, Bubba joked about having a “50/50 chance” to win the event on Sunday afternoon, but Thomas wore an expression of quiet devastation. With the way he stared silently at his interviewers as they asked him to describe his disappointment, I half expected a blow-up, or at least a caustic/sullen retort. But I had it wrong; mentally, Thomas was far away, already steeped in regret. The wide eyes were more like a symptom of shock, and less like a sign of impending fury.

“I need to be mentally stronger than that, and understand that it’s just a match,” he said a few minutes later, and as he signed the standard and a collection of hats from the volunteers, he did not seem overjoyed at the prospect of having to play a consolation match. I had the thought at the moment that he would almost definitely lose, but then Alex Noren lost in 19 holes to Kevin Kisner in his latest effort to break through with a win on American soil, and the distinction between the two painful failures seemed pretty small.

Beyond the narrow miss with the World Rankings, though, this is another great week for Thomas, and another sign that he should be grouped with Watson and Rory McIlroy and nobody else in the trio of super-favorites to win at Augusta. He may feel down today, and it may linger with the memory of what was at stake, but the Justin Thomas’ trajectory shoots upward by the week, and shows no signs of slowing.

The post Justin Thomas falls in semifinals, in part because he couldn’t stop thinking about becoming No. 1 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.