WGC Match play competition is different: Just ask Kevin Kisner

The Tour returns to Austin County Club this month for the WGC Match Play Championship. an event that won’t necessarily reward the best player.

The PGA Tour returns to Austin Country Club March 25 for the WGC Match Play Championship, the one week on the tour where the guy who plays the best isn’t assured of winning.

It is one of the enduring qualities of match play that the prize goes to the winner of a succession of head-to-head competitions rather than to the top player in the aggregate. Last year’s WGC Match Play, which was won by Kevin Kisner, is a superb illustration of the difference.

Kisner won the title by completing seven rounds of golf. The vagaries of match play are such that he actually won only six of those seven matches, losing his first-round match to Ian Poulter 2-up.

More from Pro Golf Now

• Golf Rumors: LIV set to sign Masters Champion in stunning deal
• Fantasy Golf: Grant Thornton Invitational DFS Player Selections
• Brutal return leaves Will Zalatoris looking towards 2024
• Stars You Know at World Champions Cup Starts Thursday at Concession
• Fantasy Golf: An Early Look at the 2024 Masters Tournament

How then did Kisner even survive his group, which also included Tony Finau and Keith Mitchell? He survived because Poulter split his other two matches, throwing Kisner and Poulter into an elimination playoff for the group title, which Kisner won with a birdie on the third hole.

On that single hole, the entire WGC Match play tournament turned.

Once into elimination play, Kisner dispatched Hao-Tong Li 6 & 5, beat Louis Oosthuizen 2 & 1, took out Francesco Molinari 1 up, and beat Matt Kuchar for the title 3 & 2.

By match play definitions, that made Kisner the best player during the week. By more standard golf definitions, though, other competitors had at least equally valid, and possibly more valid claims to that designation.

Begin with Oosthuizen, the guy Kisner beat 2 & 1 in the quarter-finals. To that point in the competition, both men had played four matches, winning three. In stroke play terms, however, Oosthuizen appeared to have had much the better of it.

The pair’s third-round matches illustrate the disparity. Oosthuizen beat Tommy Fleetwood 4 & 3 on a day when he made six birdies and an eagle on his 15 holes. Since Oosthuizen did not play the final three holes, we can’t say with certainty what that would have translated to at medal play. But if he had merely parred those final three – and he was eight-under through 15 – he would have shot 63.

In fact, the only reason Oosthuizen’s match lasted as long as it did was that Fleetwood also performed well. Applying the same assumptions, he would have turned in a 68 at medal play.

Kisner’s concurrent 2 & 1 win was against Keith Mitchell. Applying the same assumptions, we can estimate Kisner’s 18-hole medal play score at 69…six strokes worse than Oosthuizen and one worse than the guy he beat, Fleetwood. Kisner won because while Fleetwood was on pace to shoot 68, his actual opponent – Mitchell – was headed toward a 70.

Play out all seven of Kisner’s matches by that same method and we estimate his stroke play score to equate to 16-under. Do the same with Oosthuizen and he works out to 20-under, a four-stroke advantage. And Oosthuizen got to 20-under in just five rounds, two fewer than Kisner.

By that method, in fact, Kisner works out to be only the third-best player in the field. Molinari, the third-place finisher, matched Oosthuizen at 20-under… although he, like Kisner, had the advantage of playing seven rounds.

In fact, if you perform the same operation on each of the 16 players who lasted at least four rounds, the “medal play” standings look nothing like the actual match play results. For the record, here are what might be termed the ‘medal play’ scores of those final 16 along with their actual Match Play advancement:

The differences between the two forms highlighted above are not meant to belittle the match play format. Rather, they’re meant to illustrate and perhaps quantify the differences between the two forms.

Match play obviously puts different stresses on players and makes different demands of them as opposed to medal play. In some ways, it adds a ‘forgiveness’ element for what might be a well-timed bad round.

Yet in other ways, it can punish inconsistency in a format where a single hole relatively early in the event can turn the entire outcome…as Kisner’s sudden-death playoff win over Poulter did.

The event later this month at Austin Country Club is neither better nor worse than most of the Tour’s stroke-play events. It is merely different, and the 2020 WGC Match play competition will present an opportunity to savor and appreciate those differences.