WGC-Dell Match Play: Predictions for Saturday’s Knockout Rounds

With three-quarters of the field eliminated at the WGC-Dell Match Play, the 16 remaining players all have a chance to win, but they’ll have to survive two single-elimination matches on Saturday first.

Predicting the outcome of PGA Tour events is always a difficult exercise, and this week’s event, the WGC-Dell Match Play, is especially challenging. Given the unpredictability that comes with the match play format, we’ve seen no shortage of upsets, and there should be more on the way as the action at Austin Country Club continues.

With that, perhaps it’s no surprise that both Beth and I did poorly with the pool play projections we made prior to the tournament. Beth correctly picked the winner of four out of the 16 groups, while I did only marginally better, selecting five of 16. We were in agreement on six of the groups, a relatively high number, so neither one of us was able to gain much distance from the other.

With the pool play results finally determined — and at the risk of whiffing again — it’s time to make some picks for the knockout stages, starting with tomorrow’s rounds, the round of 16 and the quarterfinals. Over the following slides, I’ll provide my predictions for each of the eight morning matches, as well as my picks for the theoretical quarterfinal matchups between my chosen players.

Each player’s tournament seeding is listed in parentheses next to his name. With any luck, I’ll have better results with the knockout stages than I did with group play.

I’ll also take a risk and offer predictions on the semifinals and the finals as the WGC-Dell Match Play competition narrows to a final 2017 champion.