MARANA, Ariz. — Geoff Ogilvy didn't play well in winning the 2009 WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, at least not at the start, and not by his standards.
Ogilvy needed 19 holes to beat Kevin Sutherland in the first round. Shingo Katayama then all but eliminated Ogilvy in round two, but had a misadventure on 18 to force extra holes, and hit his ball in the desert again to lose to the young Australian on the 19th hole.
That was all the opening Ogilvy needed.
"To win the whole thing you need a few things like that to happen," said Ogilvy, who would get progressively better that week to win the Accenture for the second time. "I mean you had the one year when David Toms steamrolled everyone [in '05], but that's rare."
This is the first co-sanctioned PGA/European Tour event of 2011, and it will likely eclipse the Tour's Mayakoba Classic in Cancun, the Nationwide tour's season-opening Panama Claro Championship, and the LPGA's HSBC Women's Champions in Singapore.
With the best players in America and Europe having been largely segregated this year, and the rankings generating discussion on both sides of the Atlantic, the Accenture might help make sense of things.
It could also be no help whatsoever.
This is either the easiest tournament to win — you have to beat only six players, not 143 — or the hardest. A player who has just one bad round usually won't get the chance to overcome it.
That was all the opening Ogilvy needed.
"To win the whole thing you need a few things like that to happen," said Ogilvy, who would get progressively better that week to win the Accenture for the second time. "I mean you had the one year when David Toms steamrolled everyone [in '05], but that's rare."
This is the first co-sanctioned PGA/European Tour event of 2011, and it will likely eclipse the Tour's Mayakoba Classic in Cancun, the Nationwide tour's season-opening Panama Claro Championship, and the LPGA's HSBC Women's Champions in Singapore.
With the best players in America and Europe having been largely segregated this year, and the rankings generating discussion on both sides of the Atlantic, the Accenture might help make sense of things.
It could also be no help whatsoever.
This is either the easiest tournament to win — you have to beat only six players, not 143 — or the hardest. A player who has just one bad round usually won't get the chance to overcome it.