Rocked Again

Match play can be as capricious as it is dramatic. Scott McCarron learned that in Sunday's 36-hole final of the Accenture Match Play Championship at the La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif. For most of the match McCarron was all fairways and greens, clearly outplaying Kevin Sutherland, who was spraying drives everywhere. Yet when the two arrived at the 31st tee, McCarron was only one up, and he couldn't resist sticking it to his old high school nemesis. "Hey, are you ever going to hit a fairway?" he asked.

Sutherland shook his head. "I don't see how," he said. "The way I'm going today, I feel as if I'm back in high school."

McCarron, 36, and Sutherland, 37, had last gone mano a mano 20 years ago in California, when McCarron was a junior at Vintage High in Napa and Sutherland a senior at Christian Brothers in Sacramento. In that match Sutherland was five strokes behind at the start of the back nine, but shot a 28 coming home and won by one. There wasn't another 28 in Sutherland's bag on Sunday, but he scrambled well enough to catch McCarron on the 32nd hole, go one up on the 33rd and then hold on for the first Tour victory of his career, one worth $1 million. As we heard countless times last week, that's match play. Here's how it looked from the inside.

Wednesday Wow, there hasn't been a Wednesday this cruel since The Addams Family. The three top-ranked players in the world—Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and David Duval—lose their opening matches, and the fourth, Sergio Garc�a, rallies from 2 down to avoid joining them. Without Woods, Mickelson and Duval, the rest of the suddenly low-profile Match Play looks like The Producers with Abe Vigoda filling in for Matthew Broderick. This could be a long week. The Tiger slayer, by 2 and 1, is the Bathurst Bulldog, as Peter O'Malley, a 36-year-old journeyman, is known back home in Australia. "I honestly can't say I was expecting to win," O'Malley says.

No one uses the s word (as in slump) when talking about Woods, who will blame his poor putting on La Costa's bumpy poa annua greens. Woods wills in a 25-footer at the 16th, his first birdie of the day, to extend the match, but before he gets a chance to hole a short birdie putt at the 17th, Bulldog cans a 20-footer to end the match.

John Cook doesn't think his thumping of Mickelson is an upset. Cook is 44 and past his prime, but he won on Tour (the Reno-Tahoe Open) last year and has been enjoying a resurgence. "It's not like Wagner beating Duke in the first round of the NCAAs," he says.

The three big losses, though, accentuate a feeling of dread that hangs over the tournament. No one wants to go home after only one round—not counting John Daly when he's playing in the U.S. Open—yet half the 64-man field is axed today, with each loser getting a consolation prize of $27,500. "You might as well have the bags packed," Ernie Els tells his wife, Leizl, the night before his first-round win over Jeff Sluman. Davis Love III unpacks six shirts but irons only the one he wears when he opens with a victory over Phillip Price. "You don't want to be cocky, iron all your shirts and then have it backfire," says Love, who knows the perils of a first-round loss. In 1999, when Steve Pate beat him on Wednesday morning, Love and his wife, Robin, killed the afternoon by going shopping. On impulse they bought a macaw named Ruby. "If we sit down to eat and don't feed the bird, Ruby screeches so loud, you just about come out of your chair," Love says. "If you leave the house, Ruby yells at you. The bad news is, these birds live 60 to 80 years. The first kid who moves out of my house takes Ruby with him." Love sighs. "You're lost for something to do, and you end up buying a bird. I wish I'd made it through that first match."

Thursday Moments after holding on to beat Love one up in the second round, Paul Azinger turns to check the scoreboard by the 18th green. The board shows that Garc�a and Charles Howell are all square. "That's the match I'd be out watching now," Zinger says. "I might go see for myself."

He doesn't, but Martina Hingis does. The No. 5-ranked woman tennis player and Garc�a are an item. The Sergio-CH3 match, however, is more letdown than showdown. The players scrape around the last five holes, with Howell falling behind when he misses the 16th green and tries to fly his pitch over a bunker but under one of the squat pines that surround the green. He misses, bogeys to go one down and never recovers.

Told that Hingis was in his gallery, Garc�a says coyly, "Oh, was she? I didn't see." Are you friends? he's asked. "Yeah," Garc�a says. "I guess she likes golf." Later he and Hingis are seen sitting-together on the clubhouse veranda.