Peter Williams: The magic of matchplay is lost on television producers

The world's best 64 golfers, minus a few who really must be injured not to be playing for US$7m ($9.7m), are in Los Angeles this week for the World Golf Championship Match Play.

This is the closest a golf event comes to a tennis tournament. The 64 players are seeded into a knockout draw according to world rankings and, if all went as it should, Vijay Singh would be playing Tiger Woods in the final.

But because upsets happen in matchplay, the chances of that happening were always remote and both Woods and Singh were eliminated in the second round.

It's hardly surprising that so little matchplay - a man-to-man contest won by the numbers of holes won rather than the number of strokes taken - is played compared to full-field strokeplay events. The quality of the tournament's field makes it the only matchplay contest with credibility.

Matchplay's virtual demise as a professional form of the game is all about television. A strokeplay tournament with 70 players competing, all playing a full 18 holes, always gives a TV producer action to show.

The WGC matchplay final, with two players scheduled to play 36 holes, could last as few as 19 holes or as many as 40 or more, to find a winner. So there'll be a lot of dead air between shots. The duration is anyone's guess so it's a TV producer's logistical nightmare.

One of the majors, the US PGA, was actually matchplay from 1916 until 1957. But the demands of TV, even in those days, forced a change of format.

The irony in this modern era is that one of the hottest tickets in golf is for a matchplay event - the Ryder Cup. But that brings in the elements of team golf, not to mention the nationalistic and continental emotions which have overrun the biennial transatlantic contest in recent years.

So is one form better, more demanding or pure than the other? The ultimate test of a golfer is still a strokeplay round. It's you against the course, every shot counts and every putt must be played into the hole.

In matchplay you seldom get to play 18 holes and many's the time when a tricky little putt is conceded for tactical reasons, or is not played out because the opponent has already won the hole. For those reasons New Zealand Golf's insistence that players submit scorecards from matchplay for handicapping purposes is illogical. But that's another subject for another day.

A matchplay tournament seldom sees the best player in the field become the winner. In strokeplay the entire field competes against each other for the duration.

In matchplay, one player can shoot four-under par and lose his match, while at the same time another can score four-over and progress to the next round.

Matchplay tournaments produce more upsets and surprise winners than strokeplay events, yet the national amateur championship of virtually every country in the golfing world is decided by matchplay. It's illogical, especially as the main prize is often exemption to a professional tour, or to the final stage of the qualifying school.

This weekend I'm playing in the National Mid-Amateur Championship, for players over 30, at Springfield in Rotorua. As I see it, the best players are Franz Schwanner of Manukau and Alex Tait of Whangarei.

But it's a matchplay tournament and I'll be surprised if they're the two in the final.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY