Author: Matt Fargo - Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Ford Championship at Doral Preview
As predicted last week, the Accenture Match Play Championships are difficult to predict and the results showed that as three players with seeds of 11 or lower made it to the weekend semifinals with 13th seed Geoff Ogilvy winning the event over DL3. Now that that's over, we go back to medal play and the beginning of the southern swing. The first event is the Ford Championship at Doral at the famed Blue Monster where Tiger Woods will be looking to defend his 2005 title.
This is a powerful group of players teeing it up this week as nine of the top ten and 15 of the top 21 are in the field. This always seems to be one of the best finishes in golf as no one has won this tournament by more than two strokes over the past 10 years. Of the past 13 champions, only Scott Hoch and Greg Norman are not in the field. Included in the field is Nick Faldo who is in his first tournament since the 2005 British Open. He is one of five international players who have won this event the last 11 years.
Woods had an earlier than expected exit in the Accenture but that could suit him well here. He had the flu the previous week so an extra couple days of rest will do wonders. Woods rallied last year with a final round 66 to overtake Phil Mickelson and claim victory by one stroke. Woods is the all-time money leader at Doral despite playing the event only three times. It helps to finish 1st, 2nd and 9th. Woods has the best scoring average over the last 10 years at 68.3.
Jim Furyk is a past champion and he has fared very well here over his last five starts. Besides the win, he has three top tens including a runner up finish in 2003 after losing to Hoch in a playoff. He was ousted in the first round last week against Zach Johnson but while that loss was an upset at the time, Johnson made it to the semifinals so it wasn?t that bad after all. Furyk has enjoyed a successful 2006 with two top tens and there top 12's in four stroke play events.
The only two-time champion in the field is Steve Elkington who won the event in 1997 and 1999. Since then he has missed the cut twice but also has a fifth place finish in 2002 and a 12th place finish last year to his credit. Since 1988 he has finished 12th or better seven times so he definitely has success at Doral. He hasn't been playing great this year, finishing no higher than 35th in three events and getting ousted in the first round last week against David Howell in extra holes.
Retief Goosen finished eighth at Doral last year after a 3rd place finish in 2004. This will be just his fourth start ever in this event and he brings in a lot of momentum from last week. It was a question mark on how he would do last week but he proved a lot of people wrong by going out and making it to the quarterfinals before losing to the red-hot Johnson. He was the only number one seed to advance that far and this will be his first stroke play tournament of the 2006 season.
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