PREVIEW: 2022 PGA Tour – WGC Dell Technologies Match Play

Match play on the menu this week

The tour ended its hectic Florida Swing with a nail-biting conclusion to the Valspar Championship. Sam Burns beat PGA Tour rookie and long-time friend Davis Riley in a playoff, securing his 2nd consecutive victory at Innisbrook.

March’s golfing bonanza continues with this year’s renewal of the WGC Dell Technologies Match-Play. We move to the Lone Star State for one of my personal favourite events on the Tour.

It’s always nice to have a break from the relative monotony of the stroke-play format. Sure, it tends to make a mockery out of the prediction process. But it also results in wacky surprises that just aren’t as prevalent in regular stroke-play events.

GIR key to success at Austin Country Club

After enjoying a fairly nomadic existence for some time on the tour, the WGC Match-Play seems to have found some stability at Austin Country Club. This will be the sixth renewal staged at this Pete Dye creation. 

Designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1984, Austin is a parkland course with plenty of risk-reward holes (which is what you want from a match play test). The 317-yard par-4 13th is a perfect example of this (Bryson may use a 5-iron this week).

While the course is Bermuda, it is overseeded with a Ryegrass/Fescue hybrid at this time of the year. The greens are also overseeded with Poa Trivalis. Much like other Pete Dye courses, this is a course that opens itself up to the strategists.

Players will need to manage water, winds and undulations in the fairways. A cross-section of recent winners seems to suggest that this course is not a one-size-fits-all affair.

Big hitters like DJ and Jason Day have tasted success here. But it has also favoured more accurate types like Kevin Kisner and Billy Horschel. Ultimately, players will need to putt superbly if they aim to win.

Look for players who hit plenty of GIR and can catch fire with the short-stick.

Unique format to provide plenty of thrills

This is obviously a pretty unique event that takes place over five days. There will be 16 groups of four golfers that will play round-robin match-play over the first three days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday).

The winner of each group will advance to the knockout stage, which starts on Saturday. The round-robin works like this: the winner of each head-to-head match will receive a full point.

Any draw will result in split points. If two players end up tied at top of the group, there will be a sudden-death playoff on Friday to determine who makes it through to the knockout stages.

Saturday will feature the round of 16 and quarterfinal matches. Sunday will host the semi-finals and final (as well as a third-fourth playoff match).

It’s quite a surreal event in that Sunday turns into a highlight-athon, with only two matches being played simultaneously at any time.

It does make for a slightly anti-climactic finale for such a fun event.

Best of the best line up this week

Like any WGC event, this is an absolutely elite field that features 64 of the world’s top 69 players. The five players who have chosen to skip this week’s event are Cam Smith, Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama, Harris English and Phil Mickelson.

I thought Cam Smith may want another crack at a Pete Dye design after his stunning victory at TPC Sawgrass. Defending champion Billy Horschel will be looking to become the first back-to-back WGC Match-Play champion since Tiger Woods in 2003-2004.

Jon Rahm finished runner-up here in 2017 and he is due a big performance. Collin Morikawa has been a bastion of consistency over the last 18 months. But he has gone off the boil dramatically over the last two weeks, missing the cut at the Players before finishing well down the field at the Valspar.

He needs to find some rhythm with the putter to hold off World Number Three Viktor Hovland. The Norwegian has made massive gains in the OWGR and could be a contender again this week.

There are just too many possibilities to succinctly cover in this small blurb. Let’s just hope it provides plenty of excitement.

Past Winners

2021: Billy Horschel beat Scottie Scheffler 2&1
2020: no event
2019: Kevin Kisner beat Matt Kuchar 3&2
2018: Bubba Watson beat Kevin Kisner 7&6
2017: Dustin Johnson beat Jon Rahm 1up
2016: Jason Day beat Louis Oosthuizen 5&4

To Win Outright

Jon Rahm 12/1 | Justin Thomas 12/1 | Viktor Hovland 14/1 | Collin Morikawa 16/1 | Scottie Scheffler 18/1

Value Bets

Paul Casey- To Win 33/1 | To Place 13/2

Paul Casey certainly has a tricky- if unremarkable- group to navigate. Louis Oosthuizen, Corey Conners and Alex Noren will be his round-robin opponents this week. There is just plenty to like about Casey this week. He finished inside the top 10 here in both 2017 and 2019. Casey is coming off a third-place finish at that other Pete Dye classic: TPC Sawgrass. It’s really the combination of solid iron-play and putting that makes him so appealing. He currently ranks 6th on tour in strokes gained approaching the green. He also ranks 12th on tour for one-putt percentage.

Kevin Kisner- To Win 70/1 | To Place 14/1

Aside from Matt Kuchar, Kevin Kisner is the only other man in the world who has finished inside the top four on two occasions at Austin Country Club. His surgical iron-play and deliberate shot-making seem to perfectly fit this layout. His relative lack of distance seems to actually work in his favour, allowing him to avoid hubris-fuelled decisions that may play on the longer player’s minds. He just keeps it simple, keeping the ball in play and putting brilliantly. He has a fantastic record here, losing just three of 17 matches at Austin Country Club. Kisner lost to Bubba in the 2018 final before winning the 2019 crown. He also has some real Pete Dye form coming into this event, finishing in fourth spot at the recent Players Championships. Sure, he has Justin Thomas to see off. But otherwise, a group of Leishmann and Luke List looks doable for Kisner. 70/1 for a two-time finalist feels like great value.

The Man to Beat- Bryson DeChamebeau- To Win 28/1 | To Place 56/10

This is a big risk when you consider that DeChambeau’s last top 10 came in last year’s Tour Championship. He has been beset by wrist injures of late, forcing him to withdraw from both his defence of his Arnold Palmer title and the Players. He says he is at 90% this week and we should be seeing some marked improvement from the big-hitting American. This is a ‘gut-feeling’ decision. He hasn’t gone beyond the round-robin stage in either of his two previous starts. But he has drawn a favourable group that features Richard Bland, Talor Gooch and Lee Westwood. If he fires at 80% capacity, he should progress through this group. He has the power to eliminate all the ‘risk’ from the risk-reward holes out there.