This past Sunday brought an end to an era on the PGA Tour. Designated events, select PGA Tour tournaments with bigger purses to compete with LIV Golf, have replaced the World Golf Championship events on the schedule. The World Golf Championships – Dell Technologies Match Play event at the Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas, was most likely the last World Golf Championship.
The WGC Match Play has been played at various venues since 1999, and it has been in Austin with Dell as the title sponsor since 2016. Since being in Austin, the tournament has raised over $6 million in charitable donations for the Greater Austin Area, with Dell Children’s Medical Center and The First Tee as two of the multiple beneficiaries. Volunteer at a PGA Tour Event near you and make a difference in your community!
This year’s two semi-finals consisted of 1st seed Scottie Scheffler vs 13th seed Sam Burns and 3rd seed Rory McIlroy vs 15th seed Cameron Young. I was probably not alone, but I was hoping for a final showdown between world number one Scottie Scheffler and world number three Rory McIlroy. Scottie and Rory ended up meeting, but in the consolation match.
Both semi-final matches went to extra holes. In a see-saw match which saw Scottie Scheffler down three holes early and Sam Burns down two holes on the back nine, Sam came back and birdied the 21st hole to win the match. Cameron Young was up early in his match with Rory McIlroy but found himself down from the 6th hole through the 17th hole. He rallied to birdie the 18th hole and first extra hole to win the match.
The championship match failed to deliver an exciting finish to match the semi-finals, as Sam Burns birdied his last four holes and eight of his last ten, winning easily 6&5 over Cameron Young. It was Sam’s first appearance in the Dell Technologies Match Play, while Cameron was looking for his first PGA Tour win. Seeing Sam and Cameron in the final was an example of the beauty of match play, where anyone in the field has a legitimate shot at winning the title. Hopefully the PGA Tour finds a way to get a new match play event on the schedule.
Rory McIlroy led the whole way in the consolation match and won 2&1 over Scottie Scheffler.
In stroke play tournaments, players play their own game, playing the course, trying to shoot the lowest score possible, then seeing how their score stacks up against other competitors. A common theme heard on the network coverage was that in match play, a competitor will many times alter their game from playing against the course, to playing their opponent. There are occasions when that happens, but for the most part the PGA Tour players are playing their same game, just going out trying to shoot the lowest score possible.
Rory McIlroy alluded to that during his on-course interview on the 6th hole of his Saturday quarterfinal match against Xander Schauffele.
Many times, the world wants us to live our lives according to its ways. In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, he tells us not to conform to this world, but through the Holy Spirit discern what is pleasing to God.
When the world gets loud, it’s reassuring to know we have God’s living word in the Bible to rely on.