2015 WGC Cadillac Match Play: Bracket, format and results

The WGC Cadillac Match Play is the most unique event of the entire PGA Tour season. It’s the only time most of these pros play this format as individuals. It’s a format that they play most of their amateur lives and all throughout their prospect years coming up in the game. But then they almost never revisit it once they turn pro and play the major tours around the world.

So the WGC Match Play event is the rare instance to get these guys head-to-head and in a bracket-style tournament. The event, however, had lost momentum and energy in recent years. It badly needed an overhaul. The result is this year’s edition, which is in a new spot on the schedule two months later than its usual slot, a new venue, a new sponsor and a completely new format. Here are some of the background nuts and bolts as well as all the new wrinkles for this year’s WGC Match Play.

After spending the last eight years in Tucson, the PGA Tour moved this marquee event to TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. The Dove Mountain course that hosted it previously was constantly panned by the players and rated among the worst for courses that were on the annual rota. Despite significant alterations by Jack Nicklaus, the Dove Mountain venue never took hold and a course change was a big part of the effort to rejuvenate this event.

Harding Park is a classic public course with plenty of history. It opened in 1925 and regularly hosted many of the world’s best golfers during the middle of the 20th century. The course then fell off the map and was neglected a bit before major improvement efforts and investments were made at the start of the 21st century.

It hosted a WGC event back in 2005 and then hosted the Presidents Cup match play event back in 2009. With it being a PGA Tour property, it’s not surprising that they opted to relocate one of their better championships to this TPC venue. While it doesn’t have the prestige of some of the neighboring Lake Merced blue blood tracks like Olympic and San Francisco Golf Club, it’s still a big improvement over Dove Mountain. Plus, it’s in an awesome city that many of these PGA Tour pros and international stars never visit.

The field includes the top 64 players in the world, save for Luke Donald, Tim Clark and Phil Mickelson. Donald is attending his brother’s wedding in England. Clark remains out of golf with an elbow injury. And Mickelson backed out on Sunday night, citing “personal reasons.”

That opened up three spots for the players ranked 65th through 67th in the Official World Golf Rankings. They are Miguel Angel Jimenez, Francesco Molinari and Mikko Ilonen (full field table here).

Tiger Woods will miss the event for the second straight year. In 2014, he was ranked No. 1 in the world but chose not to enter. This year, he had no choice and just like the WGC event at Doral in March, his world ranking simply wasn’t good enough to qualify. Woods has owned the WGC circuit -- it’s maybe the most astounding section of his resume. He won 16 of the first 32 WGC events played, and has 18 total WGC titles to his name (the next closest is Geoff Ogilvy with ... three!). He’s got four Match Play titles, but at No. 116 in the world, he wasn’t close to earning an invite, despite all that past domination.

Since its inception in 1999, the WGC Match Play event has always been a simple 64-man single elimination bracket just like the NCAA Tournament. There were four regions with No. 1 seeds, all based off the Official World Golf Rankings at the time. It was a unique format and one of the few (or only) times these pros got to play match play anymore. It was the only regular PGA Tour stop that featured the match play format.

It’s still a match play event, but the path over five days is completely new. The big drawback to the old format was that the biggest names were often done by Wednesday afternoon. Match play golf can be fickle and unpredictable -- a No. 1 seed vs. No. 16 seed is not comparable to an NCAA basketball game. So you’d often have the top draws and headliners bounced early. You also had players jetting in from all over the world for potentially just one day of golf (and a guaranteed $40k-plus paycheck).

There was also just less golf -- less to show for the networks. While the match play format is different and fun to watch, this was the odd golf event that could get worse and worse as the week progressed.

So a change was needed to reboot the championship. This year there at 16 different four-man pools that will go through round robin play for three days. So every player is guaranteed three matches, one per day from Wednesday through Friday. After the round robin pool play, the 16 winners of each pool will advance to the traditional single-elimination bracket.

With this revised format, a new draw show was put on this week to set the final pools. The leaders or head of each pool were simply the top 16 players in the world rankings, from No. 1 Rory McIlroy to No. 16 Hideki Matsuyama. Filling out the remaining three players was accomplished through a random drawing from larger groups. A player from No. 17 to 32 in the world was randomly paired with a No. 1 seed; then a player from No. 33 to 48 in the rankings; and finally one from No. 49 through 64 in the OWGR (table of those groups here).

The drawing was done lottery style with ping pong balls bouncing around on Monday during an interminable Golf Channel selection show, and this is how the pools shook out:

The method for advancing each player from the four-man pools is pretty simple: the guy with the best overall record after the three round robin matches. If there’s a two-way tie, however, the head-to-head record breaks it. If there’s a three-way tie, there’s a separate sudden death playoff.

The WGC Match Play has always been one of those rare events that starts on a Wednesday, and while the format is totally new, it’s still a five-day event. The round robin matches will go from Wednesday through Friday, with tee times running from 12:50 p.m. through 6 p.m. ET each day.

With 16 players left on the weekend, the Tour will send them out for 36 holes on both Saturday and Sunday. The sweet 16 will go off Saturday morning followed by the quarterfinals that afternoon. The semis will take place Sunday morning, bright and early before 7 a.m. local time in San Francisco. The finals and consolation match will follow that Sunday afternoon with a scheduled finish estimated for 6 p.m. ET

The one drawback to this new round robin pool play format is that some of the matches are meaningless on the final day. There was speculation that several players on the grounds who have no chance of advancing may show up, hit one shot, and then concede the match and get out of there.

While there are several matches that have no impact on setting the single elimination bracket, there are a few monster matches that will be winner-take-all. The two big ones feature the top two players in the world. A 2-0 Jordan Spieth gets an undefeated Lee Westwood at 2:50 p.m. ET and Rory McIlroy gets an undefeated Billy Horschel at 5:30 p.m. ET. That played out about as well as the PGA Tour could have hoped. Here are a few other marquee matchups that have meaning on Friday:

And here’s the full tee sheet for all 32 matches on Friday.

The move to the West Coast and the change in the schedule to later in the year mean this week will provide that extremely rare opportunity for prime time golf back in the eastern United States. That never happens for a PGA Tour event.

The U.S. Open has pushed prime time golf during their mid-June stops at west coast venues, but the PGA Tour’s west coast swing is usually over by the end of February and they don’t hit that part of the country again during the summer. This week, however, Golf Channel will have a prime time broadcast throughout pool play and then split coverage with NBC on the weekend.

NBC will run quarterfinals coverage after the Kentucky Derby on Saturday and up until 11 p.m. ET. The semis and finals on Sunday, however, will take place bright and early with the usual targeted finish for 6 p.m. back in the east. The full schedule for the week (all times ET):

Wednesday/Thursday
Golf Channel -- 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday
Golf Channel -- 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Saturday
Golf Channel -- 3 to 7:30 p.m.
NBC -- 7:30 to 11 p.m.
Sunday
Golf Channel -- 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
NBC -- 2 to 6 p.m.

All TV coverage will also simulcast stream online via Golf Channel and NBC’s LiveExtra service.

The round robin part of the event came to an end with the best match of the week so far. Rory McIlroy came back on Billy Horscel, the world No. 1 taking it to 20 holes before filling out the final line of the single elimination bracket for the weekend. It was a fantastic match that highlighted the best of this pool play format down the stretch. Here are all your results from the third day of pool play:

Rickie Fowler was the first player to lock up a spot in the sweet 16 single elimination bracket. Fowler beat Shane Lowry a day after beating Harris English. Those two play each other on Friday, so it won’t matter if Fowler loses because he owns the head-to-head tiebreaker.

In addition to Fowler, both Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth stayed unbeaten but they’ll face do-or-die Friday matches against two other unbeatens. Spieth needed just 10 putts on his last 10 greens to take care of Every, while McIlroy was pushed by Brandt Snedeker but finished strong for a 2-up win. Here are all your results from Thursday’s round-robin play:

The biggest names took care of business on Wednesday, most notably Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. McIlroy blasted Jason Dufner and was never threatened during his opening match, rolling to a 5&4 win. Spieth’s putter was hot again and even though Mikko Ilonen had been in form, it never seemed like he had a chance to get up on Spieth and pull off the upset. Here are your results from the first day:

Only on group needed to go to the three-man sudden death playoff. Charley Hoffman, Branden Grace, and Zach Johnson all finished 2-1 with no head-to-head tiebreaker. So the trio went back out on the course and settled things in extra holes. Grace won is on the third playoff hole with a birdie, so he advances to the sweet 16. Here are your final standings after the completion of pool play.

The bracket for the weekend is now set. There sweet 16 and quarterfinals will take place over a 36-hole Saturday. The semis and the finals/consolation match will take place over 16 holes on Sunday. via PGATour.com: