IT IS one of the most common misconceptions in golf — only just behind the one that says you need to have shoulders wider than a runway at Heathrow to drive the ball a long way — to think that Tiger Woods is no good at matchplay. People point to his record in the Ryder Cup, where he has lost 11 of his 20 matches, or the final of the 1998 World Match Play, his only appearance in the autumn spectacular, where he lost to Mark O’Meara, or that he has won the World Golf Championship matchplay event only twice in seven attempts.
But consider Woods’s stunning matchplay record earlier in his career, when he won USGA Junior Amateur titles in 1991, 1992 and 1993 and then three US Amateur titles from 1994 to 1996. Looked at by anyone else’s standards, Woods’s matchplay record is exceptional. It is just that when compared with his own remarkable performance at strokeplay, it is less than glittering.
Who will be the player most feared by his rivals when the World Match Play starts this week? Simon Khan? Hardly. Tim Clark? Don’t think so. It won’t even be Ernie Els, who has won this event six times. Beating Els would be like winning the final itself. Except that Els is not the most feared competitor of all in this year’s field. That accolade goes to Woods. The Open and US PGA champion is now married and is heavier, richer and less hirsute than he was in 2000. But he is in a vein of form approaching that of six years ago, when he won nine tournaments, three of them major championships in a row — the US Open, the Open and the US PGA.
Since the last HSBC event, Els’s alterations to the West Course at Wentworth have been unveiled to much approval. Woods is looking forward to seeing them, having heard good things about them from European players. “I remember a lot,” Woods said last month when casting his mind back to his last appearance at Wentworth. “I didn’t win. My best bud won. We had a great match.”
From the moment Bob Charles handed me a can of Coca-Cola to dispose of as I followed his match in 1967, I’ve been hooked on this event. It is the only important professional matchplay event in the world in which every match is contested over 36 holes. It is a test of stamina and skill, harking back to the days when major championships required two rounds to be played on one day and not, as sometimes happens these days, one round on two days. Reasons for going to Wentworth? To see Woods, the like of whom we may not see again. To see Els, the master of matchplay at this course. To see what inspiration can be got from a matchplay event the week before the Ryder Cup. But most of all to be disabused of the notion that Woods cannot play matchplay golf. He can.