Rory McIlroy won in a walkover on Thursday at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, getting the win when Gary Woodland withdrew from the tournament for personal reasons. McIlroy earned a full point with one match to go out of the three in the round-robin group play portion of the event.
Unfortunately for the world No. 2, his third match will be meaningless. He’s out of the tournament following his Friday match at Austin Country Club.
That’s because Soren Kjeldsen, the man who beat McIlroy 2 and 1 on Wednesday, gets the point from a walkover of Woodland on Friday. Since the Dane won his Thursday match against Emiliano Grillo, he’s assured of three group points, meaning he will move on to the round of 16 on Saturday.
McIlroy will meet Grillo in a match that will only have meaning for a few thousand dollars’ difference in where the players will finish among the 48 players who are officially eliminated on Friday.
The anticlimactic finish in deciding this group is a product of the change in 2015 to this round-robin format and the reality that Woodland’s withdrawal came at an awkward moment in the match sequencing. By rule, Kjeldsen gets the W for just being there, and there’s not a good way to make him compete for the point. They’re not doing a match of cards on the PGA Tour.
Woodland isn’t the only player to pull out of the event. Jason Day withdrew on Wednesday, announcing he would be returning home to Ohio to spend time with his mother, Dening, before cancer surgery on Friday. That means Day’s opponent on Thursday, Lee Westwood, picked up a win without having to play. However, Westwood plays Pat Perez on Friday. If Westwood wins, then he, Perez and Marc Leishman — who will get the point in Day’s absence — would all have 2-1-0 records, triggering a sudden-death, stroke-play playoff for the right to get into the weekend field.
The positive of the round-robin format is clear: Top players aren’t sent home after a Day 1 loss. However, with 22 players already eliminated heading into Friday, there are a handful of meaningless matches and walkovers already on the docket.
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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