As Jim Furyk celebrated his long overdue return to the winner's circle with victory in the RBC Heritage, some other boxes were also ticked in connection with next week's WGC-Cadillac Matchplay Championship. Once Furyk's winning putt dropped, so too the qualifying for the man-to-man golfing combat in San Francisco was finalised
. . . with Ernie Els and Tiger Woods among those jettisoned and left without an invite due to their poor rankings.
When the cut-off point came, three Irish players – world number one Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Shane Lowry – safely made the 64-man field. Els, a semi-finalist a year ago, missed out on qualifying for the first time in his career, whilst Woods, a three-time champion, who has fallen to 106th in the world rankings, will also be watching from afar. Steve Stricker, another former champion, will miss the tournament for the first time since 2006.
For the men in 65th and 66th position in the world rankings, there remains some hope of getting call-ups: Miguel Ángel Jiménez and Francesco Molinari are the players in question, and are expected to be drafted in with Luke Donald set to attend his brother’s wedding and Tim Clark, who hasn’t played since January due to an elbow injury, likely to turn down their places in the field. Qualified players have until Friday to confirm their participation.
McIlroy, of course, is guaranteed to be one of the top seeds in the revamped championship. McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Henrik Stenson and Bubba Watson will top seed the four brackets but the twist this year is that the WGC features 16 four-man groups who will play a round-robin series for the first three days before it is whittled down to 16 players who then advance into knock-out play.
The draw for the groups will take place on Monday, April 27th, with – apart from the four top seeds – the groups filled randomly with players from 5th-16th, 17th-32nd, 33rd-48th and 49th-64th thrown into the mix in a bid to spice up matters but also to guarantee players a minimum of three matches.
The tournament will be played at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco on a one-off, before moving to a new home – and new date – in Austin, Texas next year with Dell as the new title sponsor. Next year’s championship will take place the week after the Arnold Palmer Invitational and two weeks before the Masters.
There are no Irish players in the field for this week’s New Orleans Classic, with McIlroy, McDowell and Lowry all returning to action in next week’s Matchplay before moving on to the Players championship at Sawgrass. Pádraig Harrington and Darren Clarke, who both failed to qualify for the WGC, are scheduled to return to action in the Players.
Fifth in the world
Furyk moved from 10th to fifth in the world rankings on the back of his RBC Heritage success, but he won’t be trying to make it back-to-back wins on Tour. He has opted to miss out on New Orleans and will resume action in Harding Park next week.
Will the win raise expectations? “Just winning golf tournaments is what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s why I still want to compete and play, is to wake up on Sunday with a chance. But it’s not going to change the way I play or my expectations for the year. I’m just going to try to keep competing and try to put myself in position to win a championship,” said Furyk.
On the European Tour, there are just two Irish players – Damien McGrane and Michael Hoey – in the field for the Volvo China Open, where French man Alexander Levy is the defending champion. There are five Irish players competing in Madrid on Europe’s Challenge Tour: Stephen Grant, Gareth Maybin, Simon Thornton, Peter Lawrie and Ruaidhri McGee.
