Garcia's early frustration

It did not take long for Sergio Garcia to begin angrily swishing a club again when the Cisco World Match Play semi-final matches finally got under way 30 minutes late at Wentworth this morning.

Michael Campbell won the first two holes, the first with a par and the short second with a birdie, and when Garcia was unhappy with his drive at the third he thrashed at thin air with his club to show his displeasure.

No real damage was done with the shot this time, though, and he halved it in par fours to remain two down.

At the first he had carved his drive into the crowd, came up just short of the green and played a poor chip eight feet short, then on the second his tee shot landed on the green, but rolled back into the guarding bunker.

Although he played a good recovery to three feet, Campbell made no mistake from four for his two.

In the other semi-final, Ernie Els mirrored Campbell’s start by taking the first two holes off Vijay Singh, though it was the Fijian’s mistakes which gave him them.

First Singh missed the opening green and left his chip 15 feet short, then he went into the same bunker at Garcia and had his second bogey.

The start of the matches were delayed by half an hour because of overnight frost at the Surrey course.

Placing was being allowed on the fairways because the shaded areas still had frost on them when play began.

“We would have had to wait another hour for it all to clear,” said referee Andy McFee. “We thought it fair to have preferred lies because any balls running into the frosty patches could be twice their normal size by the time they stopped rolling!”

The fact that all four players practised their putting on the first green was another indication of the conditions as the practice green had been largely frost-bound before the action commenced.