Match Play Misnomer

Padraig Harrington, Angel Cabrera, Ernie Els, Woody Austin, Justin Rose, Retief Goosen, Rory Sabbatini, Jerry Kelly, Andres Romero, Niclas Fasth, Anders Hansen, Colin Montgomerie, and Hunter Mahan. That's the field for the HSBC World Match Play Championship this week at Wentworth.

No offense to this collection of very talented players, but this is definitely not a World caliber field for the title of best match play professional. It is pretty well accepted that the Accenture Match Play has well surpassed even the highest aspirations of the HSBC event.

Tiger Woods has only played in the HSBC twice. Ernie Els has wiped out the field in the championship on six occasions - three-peating on two occasions. Consider him the Michael Jordan of this event. Meanwhile, in the Accenture Match Play, the closest Els has come to winning is a loss in the consolation match in 2001 at The Metropolitan in Melbourne to Toru Taniguchi (4&3). Something's fishy there!

Taking a look at this year's field again, we find that the highest ranked player in the field is, in fact, Ernie Els at 5. Not too bad. Harrington and Sabbatini at 7 and 8, respectively, are next. In terms of rankings and performance, the field is not anything to laugh about at all. Still, it feels like something is fundamentally missing when none of the top three are in the field and less than half of the top 16 are not at Wentworth.

The question, then, like any golf tournament is: what will change that?

Apparently, I'm not the only one complaining either. Alastair Tait over at Golfweek has the same gripe.