Cadillac Match Play:
1. "Fresh and peaking" has been my mantra for capping this event for years. Had much success years ago with Toms and Ogilvy, not so this decade . . . Now on the schedule after Augusta, and further landing after a long week in New Orleans with a sweatbox finish, the dichotomies are starker than usual.
2. Harding Park and Dove Mountain could hardly be more different, IMO.
3. The new format may be less of a crapshoot, but it may create less urgency as well. Regardless, I know the look of the shooters I want tossing the dice for me this week.
Outrights:
Ian Poulter(33/1) e.w.
Zach Johnson(80/1) e.w.
Graeme McDowell(45/1) e.w.
Russell Henley(80/1) e.w.
Ryan Palmer(80/1) e.w.
Paul Casey(33/1) e.w.
Kevin Na(90/1) e.w.
Sergio Garcia(33/1) e.w.
Bill Haas(100/1) e.w.
GL
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Finally, here's a copy (with some very quick and minor editing) of my post before The American Express Championship in 2005 (and my selections were not in the hunt at all that week) . . .
I've played Harding Park at least 8 times between 1984-1996. The course was in abominable shape every time, but like Sandy Tatum, I appreciated what a gem the course truly was, and I always looked forward to my next round there. (Edit.) (I was also with everyone that parked their cars on and along the 14th and 15th holes at Harding during the 1988 U.S. Open at Olympic, just across Lake Merced). To see the changes at Harding for the first time in the context of a WGC championship is something I've been looking forward to for going on two years.
Local Knowledge:
(1) One thing that will not have changed at Harding since 1996 is the wind. Almost every day the wind comes up off Lake Merced by mid-afternoon (the Pacific is like two miles away) and will surely add teeth, especially to holes 13-17 and 8-9. (Edit.) The linked article gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling as it brought back memories of shaping shots at Harding. Also, I'm pretty sure rain is almost unheard of at this time of the year (Edit - October, then.) in the Bay area, so the firm conditions they are striving for in the set up should be no problem whatsoever.
(2) Balls really tend to drop straight down at the point of entry when shots stray into the Monterey cypress that must surely still encroach on holes like 4, 5, 6, 7 and 12. A shot flying barely into the tree line tends to drop right under the limbs and you have clearance to make a swing and shape an escape shot. If you fly a shot wildly into the second row of trees, stymies easily arise.
(3) I'll never forget this comment by the Olympic greenskeeper before the 1987 (not 1988 ) U.S. Open: "The greens (at Olympic) are like a Chinese newspaper - tough to read." I think that is true to a degree with all the coastal courses in northern California, and while the Harding greens have thankfully been "blown up" and redone, I really expect that the grains and slopes at Harding will still be tough to read, like they always were (and not really that fast by Tour standards).
Lastly, the aura of San Francisco and the Lake Merced area has always struck me for some dumb reason as conducive to good performances by continental Europeans, or maybe just worldly players.
So, in capping this tournament going in, I went looking for players that fancy shaping shots off the tee and into the greens, have an imagination around the greens and are clever at reading greens, and/or arrive with a distinctly unfulfilled quality at this point in what has been a season of promise.
An anecdote to close. I believe the 16th hole was one of Ken Venturi's favorites anywhere, and I have never played a hole that compares when it comes to firing an iron (or fairway metal) off the tee along a windbreak on the left, and then watching the shot hit a wall of wind and die straight right and into the trouble. Also, the small and sloping 16th green was probably the most difficult to read on the course. (That has to be No. 16 on the left in the picture heading posted below.) You then go to the 17th tee, and as you look through the tight chute of trees on 17, or turn and look back through the trees on 16, you are optically misled as to the extent the wind tunnel on 17 turns away from the quartering wind that just amazed you on 16. Anyway, I'll never forget the time I pured a 6 iron on 17 that might of actually been helped by the wind, and had to have flown the postage stamp 17th green by 15 yards. I knew exactly where my ball had gone missing as I tramped about through the vegetation twenty yards over the green, while the rest of my group was stuck on looking for the ball short of the green and in the hole, certain I couldn't have flown the green going "into" that wind. (Edit - never did find that ball, but I know it wasn't short and buried under the lip of the bunker.)
