VIRGINIA WATER, England, 17 October 2003 — Alex Cejka and Fredrik Jacobson made short and not so sweet appearances at the World Match Play Championship at Wentworth yesterday before exiting after hefty first round defeats at the hands of Vijay Singh and Chad Campbell.
Germany’s Cejka played some of the poorest golf of an otherwise stellar year which has taken him from the status of relative journeyman to serious major title contender. He lost 8&7 to Fiji’s Singh after 29 of the scheduled 36 holes.
Jacobson, a Swede who has similarly improved his reputation this year with top 10 finishes in the US and British opens, was also dispatched without mercy by American Campbell 6&5.
Singh was delighted with his performance but disappointed that as world No. 3 and a former winner (1997) he was not seeded and so had to negotiate yesterday’s first hurdle.
Cejka and Jacobson had won their place in a 12-man field hopeful of scooping a European record one million pounds ($1.67 million) first prize, also the biggest golf jackpot in the world this year after the Sun City Challenge dropped its top check to $1.2 million from $2 million.
Instead they departed Wentworth’s West Course 75,000 pounds the richer, their share of a 2.3 million pounds prize pot as first day losers.
Cejka and Jacobson left Dane Thomas Bjorn as the sole surviving European representative after he beat American Len Mattiace 4&3 to secure a second round appointment with US Masters champion Mike Weir.
In the other first round match, South African Tim Clark beat Australia’s Stephen Leaney 3&2 having taken 28 holes to lead for the first time. Clark next faces holder and countryman Ernie Els today, the first time they have been paired together in competitive play.
Singh tackles fourth seed Shaun Micheel, the US PGA champion, in the second round and Campbell takes on British Open winner Ben Curtis.
Olazabal’s Modesty Rewarded
In Pula, Mallorca, Jose Maria Olazabal fully justified his decision to play in the modest Turespana Mallorca Classic, instead of taking a week off, by carding a four-under-par 66 yesterday.
That left the Spaniard only two strokes off the early opening round lead, in second place behind Damien McGrane of Ireland.
Olazabal is hoping to enhance his Volvo Masters chances by playing in the event co-sanctioned with the Challenge Tour and received a confidence-booster with a faultless round containing four birdies.
The double-US Masters champion, 60th on the European money-list, with only the top 60 qualifying for the Volvo Masters in two weeks’ time, enjoyed his best form for some time.
He played yesterday with two last week’s winner in the Netherlands, Dutchman Maarten Lafeber, who shot a 68, and Lee Westwood, who posted a 72.
Westwood began badly, double-bogeying his opening hole, the 10th, with two penalty shots.
Leader McGrane, 142nd on the Order of Merit, holed out with an eight-iron with his second shot from 147 yards at the par-four 14th. Argentine Daniel Vancsik got away to an even worse start than Westwood when he ran up a sextuple-bogey 12 on the 10th after hitting three drives out of bounds.
Love’s Grand Design
Proves Not Too Rough
In Greensboro, North Carolina, some PGA players are complaining about the redesigned course here for the $4.5 million Greensboro Classic but if Davis Love does not like it, he only has himself to blame.
The US PGA veteran’s design company has completely renovated the Forest Oaks course in the past 18 months, the event moving from an April date in 2002 to one of the final events on this year’s schedule.
“The biggest complaint before was that players didn’t like the design of the greens,” Love said Wednesday on the eve of the event.
