Harrington, Clarke get rub of the green in matchplay opener

YOU can never tell in matchplay, but Ireland’s two representatives, Pádraig Harrington and Darren Clarke, appear to be favoured by the draw for tomorrow’s first round of the Accenture World Matchplay Championship at La Costa, Carlsbad, California.

Harrington plays the Japanese Toshimitsu Izawa, whose experience of the head-to-head stuff is severely limited, while Clarke, the champion in 2000 and a quarter-finalist last year, should have a decided edge over the 49-year-old Argentinian Eduardo Romero.

However, confidence won’t be high after disappointing performances at the weekend. Harrington finished a lowly 39th in the Carlsberg Malaysian Open while Clarke shot rounds of 82 and 68 to miss the cut in the Nissan Open in Los Angeles.

Harrington’s decision to take two months away from the competitive arena and then return to action in the sweat box that is Malaysia was questionable.

He started reasonably well with a 69 but seemed to suffer, like so many Europeans, from the oppressive heat over the closing three days. Having completed 72 pretty exhausting holes, he was yesterday making his way to California with limited time to re-accustom himself with a course where he beat John Cook by 4 and 3 in the first round last year before going out at the 16th to Scott Hoch in the second.

The tournament hasn’t proved fruitful for Harrington who lost in the first round to American left hander Steve Flesch by 3/2 in 2002 2/1 to the eventual champion Steve Stricker in Australia in 01 and also by 2/1 to Jesper Parnevik in the millennium year. He didn’t play in the inaugural one in 1999.

Harrington’s failure to go beyond the second round in his four outings is all the more surprising because of his vast experience of match-play golf during his highly successful amateur days and he also reached the final of the European version of the Match-Play Championship at Wentworth three years ago.

Darren Clarke, of course, played a lot of matchplay golf in his youth and indeed defeated Harrington in the Irish Close final at Baltray in 1990.

He has done very well in California, even if he did lose on the 18th to Andrew Magee in ‘99. Twelve months later, he made the golfing world sit up in a big way when in successive days he defeated Paul Azinger 2/1, Mark O’Meara 2/1, Thomas Bjorn 5/4 , Hal Sutton 2/1, David Duval 1 hole and Tiger Woods 4/3 (the last two over 36 holes) to capture the first of his two World Championships.

“Darren just flat outplayed me”, conceded Woods after the shock final day outcome. It was never going to be easy to maintain such a level of performance.

Clarke decided against defending in Australia the following year and lost at the 17th to the little-known American Matt Gogel in the first round in ‘02.

He was in much better fettle last year when coming out on top in his first three matches, by 4/3 against South African Tim Clark, by 7/6 against Davis Love 111 and on the final green against Jim Furyk before going down by 2 holes to the Australian Peter Lonard in the quarter-finals.

That was a very disappointing result for Clarke who is clearly all out to make amends this week. Currently ranked the game’s 13th best exponent, he was inevitably embarrassed by starting the Nissan Open last Thursday with an ignominious 82.

His pride stung, he demonstrated commendable professionalism by coming out the following day to bring in a 68 in spite of knowing he was most unlikely to make the cut. That kind of determination may well augur well for another worthwhile tilt at the match-play title this week.

Tiger Woods became the fifth champion in ‘03 after Jeff Maggert, Clarke, Stricker and Kevin Sutherland and is now favourite to become the first player to retain the title. His prospects are helped by the absence of Ernie Els (who has withdrawn because he wants to be around when his daughter Samantha goes to school for the first time in London this week) and US Open champion Jim Furyk, who is suffering from a wrist injury.

Tiger meets John Rollins, one of the two substitutes in the first round, and if successful would then come up against the richly talented South African Trevor Immelman or the very much in form Japanese Shigeki Maruyama.

Vijay Singh meets the other “sub”, Shingo Katayama, another Japanese, in the first round and could be involved in a second round battle with Spain’s Sergio Garcia, who has been drawn against American Jerry Kelly tomorrow.

Sky cover the event over the five days.