Sport
WGC Dell Technologies Match-Play: Tyrrell the flavour of the week in Austin
The traditional stroke play format takes a break this week as the world’s best head to Austin Country Club in Texas for the WGC Dell Technologies Match-Play. As is customary in this event, the field is stacked and they’ll be plenty of shocks along the way.
Match-play is a funny format and things don’t often go to script, so expect a few interesting results this week!
In-form Hatton worth chancing
He might appear quite short at 22/1, but Tyrrell Hatton looks well worth chancing this week given his recent form. He was a very good fourth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational – further cementing his love for Bay Hill and that he excels on tough golf courses – while he finished a solo second at the Players Championship last time out. That runner-up finish came after a brilliant 65 on Sunday which saw him surge through the field to only be pipped by Scottie Scheffler.
After a somewhat quiet 2022, four top-10s in six starts this year show Hatton is right back to his best and his position towards the front of the market here is perfect evidence of that.
He has a good record at this event and that’s unsurprising given his strong record at Pete Dye designs. He’s 9-6-2 in this event which is more than acceptable and while the prospect of playing Rory McIlroy in the last-16 looks intimidating on paper, he’s shown he’s more than capable of matching the Northern Irishman before. If they do meet in the last-16, then Rory will certainly need to improve things with the driver, which, by his own comments, is still not performing as he’d want and there were plenty of rumours circling this week that he might be changing equipment manufacturers sooner rather than later.
Rory’s game is built on him driving the ball better than anybody, so if that area isn’t firing on all cylinders, it’s a big disadvantage. His missed cut at Sawgrass was evidence of such.
Russell Henley might be tricky for Hatton, but if he can get past him then he should prove too good for the out of form Lucas Herbert and relatively unknown Ben Martin in his group and he looks worth siding with here.
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Hovland could go well
The draw could certainly have gone more in his favour, with world number one and defending champion Scottie Scheffler a potential opponent in the quarter-finals, but Viktor Hovland looks really close to putting it all together and this just might be the time he does it.
The Norwegian has been playing solidly for a while now and since his great run at last year’s Open, he’s only finished outside of the top-20 three times in 16 starts. His big day obviously came at the Hero World Challenge, but his consistent form shows his game is, and has been, really solid for a while now. His chipping still makes you want to hide behind the sofa on occasions, but this just might be the event where the fact that he has to be aggressive might help that.
He was pretty unlucky not to make it out of his group 12 months ago as he was beaten by Will Zalatoris on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff. He won two of his three matches in 2022 taking his overall record to 3-3-0 in this event and he’ll have high hopes of improving that significantly this week.
As mentioned, Scheffler is a potential opponent in the quarter-finals, but before that he’ll need to get through a group of Chris Kirk, Si-Woo Kim and Matt Kuchar. Chris Kirk is in good form having won the Honda Classic this year and he played very well in his only other appearance at this event in 2016. He won’t be easy to get past, but Hovland is simply a better player and should have enough and the same can be said against the erratic Kim and ageing Kuchar.
The odds suggest it will be Collin Morikawa in the last-16, who, as we all know, has the class to beat anyone but his game still isn’t quite there at the moment, and the more confident Hovland will fancy his chances. Scheffler will almost certainly be next and he’ll be very tough to beat in the form that he’s in, but Match-Play can do funny things and a Hovland victory certainly isn’t out of the question.
A victory over the world number one would open the tournament up significantly, and at 25/1, there is enough wiggle room to find out.
