Rahm, Morikawa lead the group of 16 into Match Play weekend
AUSTIN, Texas — Jon Rahm lost his match and still made it to the weekend. Scottie Scheffler needed only 14 holes to win his match against Matt Fitzpatrick, and then six more to beat him in a playoff.
The third full day of endless action in the Dell Technologies Match Play finally ended Friday when Collin Morikawa drove the green on a par 4, this one not nearly dramatic as his shot that won the PGA Championship but still effective in getting him through group play.
Sixteen players remain for the knockout stage that begins this morning, all of them knowing that three days of tense matches mean nothing going forward.
“Now it’s real,” Abraham Ancer said after squeezing by Webb Simpson. “Now you’re for sure not advancing if you don’t win.”
Rahm had that luxury by winning his opening two matches. He was sloppy on the back nine in losing to Patrick Reed, who played his best golf after already being eliminated. But the world’s No. 1 player avoided a playoff in his group when Cameron Young also lost.
Seamus Power also lost his match, but by then he was already assured of winning his group. The Irishman got another reward: By reaching the fourth round, Power is assured of staying in the top 50 and getting into the Masters.
Dustin Johnson, Kevin Kisner and Tyrrell Hatton were among five players who won all their matches.
Four of the groups were decided in extra holes.
There are no tiebreakers, and three players who won their match had to return to the first tee for sudden death against the player they just beat.
Scheffler had the toughest time.
Scheffler had to beat Fitzpatrick to have any chance, and that was the easy part in a 5and-4 victory. They had to wait more than two hours for all the matches to go off before their playoff began. They matched birdies on No. 1, pars on the next three holes and birdies on the fifth. Scheffler finally won on the par-5 sixth when he holed a 6-foot putt after Fitzpatrick missed from about 15 feet.
“I knew the rules,” Scheffler said of going extra holes after beating Fitzpatrick in the match.
“I didn’t know we had to wait so long to come back for the playoff. I was a bit surprised with that. I would have loved to have just kept going the way I was playing in the beginning, and Matt did a really good job of regrouping, and he came out and played some really nice golf in the playoff.”
His reward is a fourth-round match against Billy Horschel, who beat Scheffler in the championship match last year.