Stars Like Rory, Bubba, Jordan Should Stay Alive for Weekend in New Match Play

The problem with match play is that it's unpredictable. Anybody can beat anybody over 18 holes. Nick O'Hern beat Tiger Woods in the first round in 2007 and in the second round in 2005, for example. 

It's a system where anybody can have a bad day. When the top players get beat early, casual fans lose interest. Now the PGA Tour hopes there's a fix for that. The new format.

This year's Cadillac Match Play Championship fixes the problem of the No. 64 player in the world taking out the No. 1-ranked player on Wednesday. Instead of four brackets like the NCAA uses, which eventually comes down to two finalists, there is now a round robin for all 64 players. The field is divided into four groups of 16 players with the top 16 each forming the basis for one round-robin group or "pod."

Then three players—one from Nos. 17-32, 33-48 and 49-64—are added to each pod. The round-robin matches are held on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The players with the best record in the round robin advance to the round of 16 on Saturday. It doesn't mean that McIlroy, Bubba Watson and Jordan Spieth will be there on Saturday, but given their world rankings, they should emerge, in theory, playing against golfers with lower rankings.

It is still unclear on what basis the player placement in brackets for the round of 16 will be decided. Does the highest-ranked player remaining after the round robin get the No. 1 seed? What if No. 64 emerges from his pod? Where does he fall in the round of 16?

However they are arranged, the round of 16 will be played Saturday morning, followed by the quarterfinals Saturday afternoon, the semifinals Sunday morning and the finals Sunday afternoon.

Last year's champ, Jason Day, is looking forward to it.

"The cool thing about the match play is it doesn't really matter how you play. So you can play some terrible golf within those 18 holes that you play and still come out on top because obviously you're just only losing one hole," he said. "You can be super aggressive, which is kind of neat, because I kind of like to be a little bit more aggressive than most people."

Last year's final match was between Day and 25-year-old Frenchman Victor Dubuisson. Dubuisson showed off short-game skills some thought had not been seen since the late Seve Ballesteros. However, the reason was because he put himself into amazing predicaments on the golf course.

"I've never seen someone as young, apart from Jordan Spieth, and in the old days Tiger Woods, how clutch he was, especially out of the cactus," Day said about Dubuisson. "I kept shaking my head because it was so surprising, because there was a couple of times there where I thought he was absolutely dead."  

"I just play my shot 100 percent like it was a playable shot, like I have nothing to lose," Dubuisson said about his recoveries. Dubuisson hit two shots out of the desert that even he described as amazing.

Day was positive on the format change.

"Obviously, it's going to keep the bigger‑name guys," he said. "The good thing about this format is you're in a pod and you have to play against your own little group. You're at least there for a couple of days. So I understand that it keeps some of the guys that may have lost in the earlier rounds, give them a chance to get into the later rounds, which is neat."

Those in the top 16 are:

Rory McIlory, Jordan Spieth, Henrik Stenson, Bubba Watson, Jim Furyk, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, Jimmy Walker, J.B. Holmes, Rickie Fowler, Matt Kuchar, Patrick Reed and Hideki Matsuyama.

Kathy Bissell is a Golf Writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand or from official interview materials from the PGA Tour, USGA, R&A or PGA of America.