While Hideki Matsuyama was shooting lights out winning the Tiger Wood’s invitational tournament-the Hero Challenge, Senior Tour players were competing in a unique format–the World Champions Cup.  The World Champions Cup was a display of grizzled Senior Tour great players competing at a very high level in nine hole match play amongst Europe, the United States and the Internationals.  Six players playing nine hole matches to generate points for their team.  Great players such as Bernard Langer, Angel Cabrera, Colin Montgomery, Stewart Cink, KJ Choi were on hand.  The competition proved to be a high caliber event but virtually unknown to the golf fan.  Europe won the event easily and the Internationals pushed ahead of the United States on the final day to finish second thanks primarily to the play of Steve Alker from New Zealand.  For the Europeans, this victory added to their PGA compatriots in the Ryder Cup at Bethpage.  However, this champagne celebration was a slumber party compared to Bethpage with the fans in Florida respectful to all of the participants.

Europe closes out the matches

While the event received little to no publicity as it was broadcast on ESPN, I found the format to be quite compelling for three man competitions.  Today, three ball matches  don’t have much choice to have a match play type event in competition as most three ball competitions are stroke play only.  There was a three man game that I played in the UK called “Chairman.”  In “Chairman” you had to win a hole outright to get into the chair.  You had to win or tie the next hole to remain in the chair.  If you won the hole, you would score a point.  If you lost the hole, the chair would revert to that winner.  The downside to “Chairman” was if a player won a number of holes in a row, the match would essentially be over for the other two players.  However, if the players were pretty equal, this game might not even produce a point in a match.  I had an experience that our three ball played Royal Lytham and St. Annes, Royal Birkdale and Royal Liverpool and at the end of three rounds–no points were scored!  Imagine, playing three rounds of competitive golf with absolutely no result–a very weird outcome.

Steve Stricker

In the World Champions Cup format, each hole holds a value of 3 points.  A player that wins the hole outright receives 2 points,  and 1 point to the player is awarded to the player  who finishes second and the third player receives none.  If both players tie for second place on the hole, then each player is awarded one-half point each.  If all players tie the hole, then each player receives 1 point.  In an 18 hole, 3 ball match, 54 points are available.  We tried this format yesterday on an experimental basis at Cordevalle and the match ended with the winner having a 1/2 point edge over the second player finisher.  The final scores were 19 1/2, 19, and 15 1/2 for a point total of 54 points.  This format is great for speed of play as a bad hole does not eliminate the player from the competition whereas in regular stroke play, a bad hole could eliminate the player from any chance of victory.  In this case, the player that finished second had a 3 point lead going into the final three holes and ended up not scoring on the last 3 holes to lose by a 1/2 point.

I think it would be very interesting if the PGA Tour tried this format and exposed the format to the golf fan.  The Tour doesn’t have much in the way of match play during the regular season.  We need something different than the Ryder Cup to bring the match play format to some semblance of golf etiquette.  A field of 50 three player matches would mirror the current field size and elevate the match play concept for the game.

In some other potentially great Senor Tour news, there are some positive rumors that Tiger Woods might decide to play the Senior Tour.  If this rumor has any validity, the Senior Tour would instantly become a household name in the golf world.  Tiger would be a dominant figure on this Tour for sure, since senior tour players can use golf carts during play, which eliminates Tiger’s big problem on the regular PGA Tour.  Tiger’s game is clearly ready to clean up on this tour, but more importantly, it would cast a brighter on the players who can still play very well beyond their PGA career.