McIlroy, Casey leave unfinished business
To think, Rory McIlroy once harbored faint hope of finishing his quarterfinal match in time to jet to Las Vegas for Saturday night’s Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight.
As it turned out, McIlroy will not finish his quarterfinal match until Sunday morning.
On a chilly, gray, breezy evening at Harding Park — perfectly authentic conditions
for golf in San Francisco — the Match Play Championship delivered high drama. It also was interminable drama, as McIlroy, the world’s No. 1 player, danced on the verge of elimination for more than an hour.
Finally, on the 21st hole and amid ever-gathering darkness, McIlroy stood over a 6-foot birdie putt to dispatch Paul Casey and reach the semifinals. McIlroy missed. So he and Casey will return to Harding at 6:45 a.m. Sunday to try once again to complete their duel. The winner will meet Jim Furyk in the marquee semifinal match, with Gary Woodland and Danny Willett colliding in the other semifinal.
PGA Tour officials suspended the McIlroy-Casey match at 8:03 p.m. Saturday after the third extra hole. The golfers will return to the No. 1 tee (normally No. 10) on Sunday morning after a short night.
“It was getting pretty dark,” McIlroy said. “We were both struggling to read our putts. We wanted to try to get finished, but we’ll come back in the morning and do it all over again.”
Or, as Casey succinctly put it, “Happy hour is coming to a close.”
For all the skepticism about Match Play’s new format, and the parade of big-name players prematurely depart- ing San Francisco, the event offered terrific theater Saturday. Really, it doesn’t get much better than the world’s top player staving off elimination against a stout, established opponent such as Casey.
Well, it gets better if one of them wins before nightfall.
McIlroy forced the playoff with a birdie on No. 16 to pull all-square. Then, on No. 18, he had a tantalizing chance to win — but his 12-foot birdie putt scooted past the hole.
“I’m frustrated,” he said. “I had two opportunities to close out the match and I didn’t.”
McIlroy was razor-sharp earlier Saturday in steamrolling Hideki Matsuyama in the round of 16, but he wobbled against Casey. One snapshot: His tee shot on No. 5, a long dogleg-left par-5 (which plays as No. 4 for the public), drifted far to the left and onto the next green.
It was kind of amusing to watch McIlroy stroll onto the wrong green and repair his ball mark. He took a drop on the fringe, and he actually stood on the putting surface when he lifted his next shot over the trees and onto the correct fairway. McIlroy had a good look at birdie but missed.
Tournament officials would never say it, but they need his star power Sunday. Casey is a strong player — ranked No. 37 in the world, with one PGA Tour win and 14 more internationally — but he’s still not Rory McIl-
The winner of Sunday’s suspended match draws a compelling opponent in Furyk, who has won 17 times on tour, including the 2003 U.S. Open.
Sunday morning’s other semifinal matches Willett, a 27-year-old Englishman with two victories on the European Tour, and Woodland, a 30-year-old from Kansas with two PGA Tour wins.
Woodland is known for his college basketball background — he played his freshman year at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., before transferring to Kansas to play golf. He also counts as one of the game’s longest hitters: Woodland ranks eighth on tour in driving distance this year at an average 303.4 yards.
He also brings a good-natured demeanor, as he showed after his quarterfinal victory over John Senden. Woodland was asked about the lowwattage nature of his imminent tussle with Willett and why “America would want to watch it.”
His response: “Because I’m in it.”