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I am often asked by golfers who compete about the difference between match play and stroke play, and the question becomes all the more relevant with the Ryder Cup upon us again. There are really only 4 important match play tournaments for Tour pros: the World Golf Championship tournament at the beginning of the year, the limited field World Match Play, the President’s Cup, and the Ryder Cup. One thing is for sure: all the guys will tell you they want to win all their matches, which means they have to beat the guys they are playing against, and only those guys. In every other event they have to beat the entire field. They keep score for 3 ½ days and then it’s game on when the back 9 comes around on Sunday. In match play it’s win or go home, or in the team competition it’s win or cost your team a point.
So, if you are in a match do you play the course, or play the opponent? I have always believed that you play the course, but you make your decisions based on your opponent. Part of that idea is purely mental, and has to do with my competitive nature. If I lose a tournament by finishing second, or in the top 5 or 10, or wherever I finish, it is far different from facing off against one guy (or two in a best-ball or alternate shot format) and losing. That is personal, and you have to take it that way in order to pump yourself up. Many times it boils down to who has the will to win in match play, and I have always been good at not allowing myself to lose. I have always hated to lose more than most, and have a pretty good match play record starting from my junior golf days in the Washington D.C. area, where almost all our major events were match play.
Match play can be maddening, and you have to have a pretty thick skin to get through some of the twists and turns that can occur in a match. To give you an example of my thought process when I was a junior my opponent, who happened to be a great friend as well, made a hole-in-one on the 11th hole to bring the match back to even. While he was jumping up and down and celebrating I picked up my bag and walked to the next tee where I waited patiently for a couple of minutes. He hit his drive in the rough, and then I hit it in the fairway. He missed the green and made bogey, and I hit the green and made a regulation par to win the hole. He three-putted to lose the next hole, then I birdied, and all of a sudden he was 3 down with 4 to go. He got so mad on the 15th green that he took a divot out of the green, and had to stay and fix it up after I shook his hand and started walking back to the clubhouse.
The greatest thing about match play, and the thing that most people find unfair about it, is that the blow-up hole only counts as one lost hole. So if you make a 10 your round is far from over. You could make a birdie and lose a hole, and you can get beat by 6 shots on a hole and it’s the exact same thing. It is a totally different game, and you have to keep that in mind as you try not to let the fact that you are playing better than someone but losing the match get to you.
That said, I still think that the most compelling thing about the Ryder Cup and match play in general is the personal nature of the competition. Nobody wants to let their teammates down, and no one wants to lose one-on-one or two-on-two to guys you are staring straight at. It’s more like boxing than normal golf, and the ebb and flow are fascinating.
As far as who is going to win, I like the home field advantage for the Americans, but the overall technique quality of the Europeans. Result? A tie, and the Cup stays in Europe.
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