Pettersson relishes prospect of Woods challenge

AN injury to Vijay Singh has given Swede Carl Pettersson the chance to claim the biggest scalp in golf tomorrow — Tiger Woods, of course.

Minutes after finishing the Nissan Open in Los Angeles in 37th place yesterday, Pettersson, originally the third reserve, was told that fourth seed Singh had pulled out of this week's Accenture world match play championship with rib trouble.

Instead of flying to North Carolina to oversee the building of his new home, the 25-year-old headed down the California coast to Carlsbad.

Just eight days ago, Pettersson, joint 21st at the US Tour qualifying school in December, finished second to Woods at the Buick Invitational. But he has never played a round with the world number one.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said. "I'm happy it's Tiger I'm playing there will be no pressure on me and it should be extremely exciting. A challenge. I watched Tiger lose to Peter O'Malley in the first round last year. Anything can happen in 18 holes match play."

Now it is Britain's Luke Donald who is first reserve for the $5.5 million event one million of it to the winner on Sunday. But for Donald to get in, there has to be another withdrawal before tonight's draw. With Toru Taniguchi and Nick Faldo ('flu) also having scratched from the 64-man field in the past week, Woods has gone from facing Robert Karlsson to Phil Tataurangi to Pettersson.

It makes no difference to the Masters and US Open champion, who lost the 2000 final to Darren Clarke and has also gone down to Jeff Maggert as well as O'Malley. "You can shoot 65 and lose that's the quality we have in the sport now and that's match play. It's hard," said Woods.

"You can't put yourself behind the eight-ball early on. You have to get off to a positive start because it's difficult to come back.

"But I'm looking forward to it too. Carl and I spoke in the locker room this week (Pettersson wanted to know the chances of Woods playing in Sweden because of his girlfriend), he played well in the Open last year and it should be a good match."

With some very bad memories of the Ryder Cup as well, of course, Woods wishes the event was over 36 holes like the Wentworth version of the Match Play, knowing that the longer distance favours the better player more.

But he was just happy last night that he had produced a closing 65 at the Nissan to move up from 28th to joint fifth. That was only three shots behind winner Mike Weir, who beat Charles Howell at the second hole of a play-off for his second win in four weeks.

Singh's rib injury changes the draw. Colin Montgomerie was expecting to face fellow Scot Paul Lawrie, but now he takes on German Alex Cejka while Lawrie plays Nick Price. Rose switches from Clarke to David Duval.