Opening loss was kiss of death for most at WGC-Dell Match Play
There were 32 matches to kick off the WGC-Dell Match Play on Wednesday. Six matches were halved, meaning there were 26 winners, 26 losers and 12 players who moved to Day 2 with a half-point in round-robin pool play.
Of the 26 players to lose their Day 1 match, only one survived group play to reach Saturday’s start of the knockout rounds: Dustin Johnson.
Johnson lost to Robert Streb in his opening Group 8 match on Wednesday, then beat Kiradech Aphibarnrat and Jimmy Walker in successive days. Johnson advanced out of the group with a birdie on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff against Aphibarnrat.
Ryan Moore, Byeong-hun An and Patton Kizzire opened with Wednesday halves and managed to win their groups. That would not have been possible a year ago. In the first year of the pool-knockout format, no pool-play match could end in an 18-hole tie, forcing extra holes to determine a match winner. Not only would these players have been forced into sudden-death, they would have played more holes than their peers had they managed to get through to the weekend.
All told, seven of the 16 group winners played to a 3-0-0 record. Last year, that number was 12. Three players moved on with a 2-1-0 record, while four others had 2-0-1 marks.
An and Kizzire moved on with a 1-0-2 mark, with Kizzire only winning a match in the final day of pool play.
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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