Accenture Match Play 2014: Tee times, TV schedule and matches for Wednesday

The most unique event of the PGA Tour season tees off Wednesday morning in Tucson, as 32 first round pairings head out in the WGC-Accenture Match Play. The event lost some major appeal when Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Adam Scott -- all No. 1 seeds -- decided to pass on the first lucrative WGC tourney of the season. But none of the other top 64 players in the world declined the easy money and world ranking points that go along with a WGC event.

There are many who lament the lack of match play format put in use throughout the golf season. Except for those international team events, this is the only week where the regular touring pros do not play your standard stroke play format. There are pros and cons, of course. The uniqueness of match play encourages some big risk/reward shots, with just one lost hole easier to stomach than some blow-up crooked number that knocks you way down a leaderboard and out of contention. The one-on-one nature of the pairings also adds a bit of drama we’re not used to getting every week.

The biggest negative is that you can lose some big names early in the week if a lower seed gets hot for a short stretch. Match play can be fickle, and a top name who draws fans and ratings doesn’t have a second or third round to get back in contention. Another negative is that you just don’t get a lot of golf and movement on the leaderboard to show or watch, but that’s certainly not a problem during the opening round. The Tour will send matches out in 10-minute intervals, rolling all off the first tee. With 32 matches to get through, it’s a sun-up to sun-down day and thankfully, the weather is supposed to be clear so there should be no repeat of that ridiculous Arizona blizzard that destroyed the early round schedule last year.

While the schedule does not have matches going out in order all the way down through the bracket, there are specific four-man pods of back-to-back matches playing in order. Here’s the tee sheet for Wednesday’s first round of 32 matches (all times EST):