The PGA Tour will shake up its format and give fans and players what could be the final Match Play event for quite some time. The top players on the PGA Tour will compete in a three-day Round Robin event, matched up against three other players in 16 groups of four, using Match Play scoring to determine which player wins and advances to the single-elimination rounds.
The same concept applies despite the scoring difference. 1 point will be awarded to the player who winds up with the lower score on a particular hole, while a 0.5 point will go to both players if they tie on a hole. Players who lose a hole will receive 0 points. The goal is to have the most points by the time the Round Robin matchup concludes. Ties at the end of a Round Robin matchup don’t have a mandatory sudden-death playoff. That is reserved for the possibility of determining the winner of the four-man group if there are two or more players with the same score at the conclusion of the three-day Round Robin. In this scenario, scoring returns to stroke play in a sudden-death playoff hole format. The same applies to the single-elimination rounds if players wind up with a tied Match Play score at the conclusion of 18 holes. 18 holes aren’t a necessity either, as a player will be declared the winner if he is leading by more points than there are holes left on the course. As a result, Saturday and Sunday will each have two rounds held at Austin CC, with the Round of 16 and quarterfinals occurring on Saturday, followed by the Semi-Final and Championship Match on Sunday, which also includes the Consolation Championship Match.
