New World Order: The madness of Match Play

MARANA, Ariz. -- The 14-piece tool box remains the same, of course.
Event to event, the implements never really change. But the 64 master craftsmen at work this week must decide, more than any other week all season, when to bust out the ball peen and when to whip out a sledgehammer.
If a stroke-play event over 72 holes is akin to a marathon, then the Accenture Match Play Championship is the golf equivalent to a 100-meter sprint.
At this particular event, guys throttle up, gear down, and often change strategies between shots. Not just theirs, either. There's nothing else like it in golf.
It's a chess match over acres of grass, cactus and sand.
"I think you've got to get a balance between playing the man and playing the course," Rory McIlroy said. "You start off the match trying to find your rhythm and getting into it, and then as the matches progress and you get further into them, sometimes you have to react to what your opponent does."
If not most of the time.
Whereas every other event on the PGA Tour pits a player against 153 others, if not against old man par, match play is mano a mano, the way the game has been played since the Scots were raking rocks around with sheepherder's crooks.
It can take a special set of attributes to succeed in match play, including an innate instinct of when to go for flags, if not the jugular, and how to stomach the mental gymnastics and gamesmanship that sometimes are part of the kamikaze, hole-by-hole style.
"I've always been a player who has been fairly aggressive on the golf course, who makes a lot of birdies and throws in the odd mistake," said Paul Casey, the Accenture runner-up the past two years. "In match play, that's not as penal. You maybe lose the hole, but it doesn’t kill your chance of winning the golf tournament."
Winning in the crazy world of match play, as Hall of Famer Nick Price once famously noted, is easier in one regard, "because you only have to beat six guys that week."
So as the biggest event of the season to date begins Wednesday, this week's New World Order list ranks the players according to a most peculiar yardstick, a veritable niche within the tournament game itself.
Right here, right now, here's the roster of the world's most matchless at the match-play format. Fill out your brackets accordingly.
1. Geoff Ogilvy With the punctuation surrounding the state of Tiger Woods' game having morphed from exclamation points to question marks, there's not much doubt as to the identity of the best practitioner of nose-to-nose warfare.
In fact, it's not particularly close. While Ogilvy's record in the Presidents Cup hasn’t turned many heads, at this particular event, he tends to come unhinged.
With victories in 2006 and 2009, Ogilvy has an impressive 18-3 record in the Accenture title. He also lost in the finals in 2006. Pretty stout for five tournament appearances, to say the least.
2. Tiger Woods This sounds like insanity, but Woods is better at match play than he is at the 72-hole beatdowns he's been handing out for 15 years. The only reason he isn’t No. 1 on the list is because his game's in disarray at the moment and the format is so volatile, a guy can get bounced if he has a bad hour, much less a bad day.
Woods would nearly qualify for the Hall of Fame on his match-play street cred alone. His record in the Accenture is a ridiculous 32-7, with three victories and a runner-up finish. Only once has Woods lost in the first round and no player has appeared in more matches overall.
You can pick apart his modest Ryder and Presidents cup marks, but the majority of those are amassed with pairings partners. Woods won six straight USGA titles before he turned pro, all of them with match-play components. Woods relishes the eyeball-to-eyeball duel like no other player.
Or, at least, he once did.
3. Ian Poulter The PGA Tour conducted an online fan contest this week for the colorful Cockney cockatiel, and picked his wardrobe for Wednesday's opening round. Amazingly, it featured a rather subdued red-and-blue argyle sweater. Well, it was sedate compared to some of his rakish outfits.
With the way his star has risen in match play, he could kick butt in a pink tutu.
The defending champion or not, Poulter has rather quietly moved up the match play pecking order, starting with his breakthrough performance at the 2008 Ryder Cup, when he was a controversial captain's pick and ended up the week as the best player on the European team. Poulter made the semifinals of the Accenture event in 2005.
Some players relish the match-play spotlight. Some players are hot dogs. Poulter is a likeable mix -- a hot dog who relishes the spotlight. He's 18-7 in the event.
4. Paul Casey Of the players mentioned ahead of him on this list, Casey's the only one with a victory this season. And he certainly knows the roadmap to the finals of this thing, having advanced to Sunday play only to lose to Ogilvy and Poulter the past two seasons.
Casey is 10-2 in his last two Accenture appearances and 15-8 overall. He won the European tour's match-play title at Wentworth in 2006.
Not surprisingly, Casey, for one, would like to see the PGA Championship revert to match play, the format it used a half-century ago.
"Hopefully that happens before I hang up my clubs," he said.
5. Stewart Cink What, you're surprised?
Cink is sneaky good at the format and lost to Woods in the 2008 finals, where he was simply outgunned by the game's best player at the absolute top of his form.
Cink has played at least four rounds at Accenture in each of the past three years.
With a record of 21-11, he's a good sleeper pick this week, especially after showing signs of life last week at Riviera. Only Woods has played more matches in this event than Cink, and that's always a good indicator of longevity and acuity.
6. Henrik Stenson He barely made the field at No. 65 in the world, added when Japan's Toru Taniguchi withdrew last weekend. But now that he's here, don’t be surprised if he stays awhile.
Stenson plays world No. 1 Lee Westwood in the first round. Stenson has won the event in 2007 and lost in the semifinals the following year, amassing a record of 12-4. Westwood? He's a forgettable 6-11 and has never made it past the second round.
Stenson has been in a slump for the past year -- he withdrew at Accenture last year after one hole with a virus that wrecked him for much of the spring. But given his pedigree in the event, especially compared to Westy, it could be a close match to the end.
7. Steve Stricker In tour years, Stricker's win at this event exactly 10 seasons ago seems like forever. For good reason. He's had two entirely different career trajectories since then, hitting rock bottom and then climbing to his highest perch ever over the past three seasons.
Along the way, Stricker has become something of a rock in match play, especially in the world competitions, putting together a record of 7-2 in his last Ryder and Presidents cup appearances.
His record at Accenture is 10-7 overall, and he lost in the first round last year, but as far as the American contingent goes, he's quite possibly a better bet than Phil Mickelson (15-10 in the event) or Jim Furyk (10-10).