Hey did you hear? Tiger Woods is playing golf again. In fact he just teed off a few minutes ago playing Brendan Jones in Match Play. Tiger birdied the first hole to go one up. Whats Match Play?…Whats Golf? Who’s Tiger Woods? Yeah…right. Even if you hate golf – you know Tiger. The most recognizable athlete on the planet is back at work this morning…Match play explained and Hole by Hole Results after the jump….

Match Play is golf’s version of the NCAAs…pitting 1 against 64, 2 against 63 etc. Total Scoring doesn’t matter…only who wins each hole. in essence 18 games with in one game.

Match play defined:

Unlike stroke play, in which the unit of scoring is the stroke, in match play the unit of scoring is the hole. On each hole, the most that can be gained is one point. Golfers play as normal. The golfer with the lowest score on a given hole receives one point. If the golfers tie, then the hole is halved.

Match play scores of a game in progress are kept with a running tally. At the start of a match, the score is “all square” or tied. The score is then recorded in terms of one player’s lead over another player. For example, if Player A has won 3 holes, Player B has won 1 hole and they have halved 2 (or any number of) holes, Player A is said to be leading, “2-up” (3 holes won minus 1 hole lost).

A team that is leading by N holes with N holes remaining is said to be “dormie-N”, or simply “dormie“, meaning that they need one more halved hole to win the match (or alternately, that the other team must win all the remaining holes outright in order to halve the match).

The final score of a match play event is listed in one of three ways:

• 1 hole or 2 holes, meaning that all 18 holes were played and that the winner was ahead by either one or two holes.
• M and N, where M is either one or two greater than N, meaning that (18 – N) holes were played, and the winning player was leading by M holes. This indicates that the winner was ahead by more holes than the number of holes left to play, so the match does not need to be finished. The greatest margin of victory a player can have in an 18-hole match is 10 and 8, which occurs when he wins the first 10 holes. For example, if the score of a match is “4&2″, then the pair played 16 holes and the margin of victory was 4 holes.
• at the Xth hole, where X is greater than 18. This indicates that the players were all square after 18 holes and played sudden death for (X – 18) more holes until one player won a hole outright. In the Ryder Cup and other similar team events, the match is not finished this way, and the teams each receive a half point. For tournament play this would not be suitable.

There you have it…too much information to know that TW is back…and the golf world is all right again…

Great Commercial to make you feel like youre watching with me…

Live Scoring

1. Tiger Woods wins with birdie – TW 1 up
2. Tiger Woods wins with eagle – TW 2 up
3. Hole is Halved w Bogey – TW 2 up
4. Hole is halved with Par – TW 2 up
5. Hole is halved with Bogey – TW 2 up
6. Hole is halved with par – TW 2 up
7. Brendan Jones wins with Par – TW is 1 up
8. Tiger Woods wins with birdie – TW is 2 up
9. Hole is halved with par – TW is 2 up
10. Hole is halved with par – TW is 2 up
11. Hole is halved with par – TW is 2 up
12. Tiger Woods wins with par – TW is 3 up
13. Tiger Woods wins with eagle – TW 4 up
14. Hole is halved with par – TW is 4 up
15. Brendan Jones wins with eagle – TW 3 up
16. Hole is halved with par – TW wins match 3 and 2

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