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AUSTIN, Texas — The final edition of the 2023 WGC-Dell Match Play opened with a bang Wednesday as top seeds fell, big names rolled and of course (of course!) Jordan Spieth made a preposterous shot that even he said was “bullshit” to win his match.
Two of the top three players in the world won their respective matches, but the other one (a three-time PGA Tour winner this season alone) fell to a resurgent Rickie Fowler. However, most of the rest of the top players are in good shape following Day 1. That’s a good thing, too, given how often Round 1 winners have moved on to the Round of 16.
Let’s take a look at some of the superlative matches and then see how the groups stand going into the second day of play.
Upset of the day
It wasn’t the strongest match (that came earlier in the day), but Fowler and Rahm combined to make 10 birdies as Fowler defeated the No. 2 player in the world in a surprising outcome. Fowler is the No. 4 seed in his pod and needs to reach the quarterfinals to play his way into the Masters. Day 1 was a great first step toward that.
“Jon didn’t play well,” said Fowler. “He’d be the first to tell you that. So, I was expecting it to be him playing a bit better or a lot better than he did today. Like I said, fortunate to come out with a win on that one. Between Billy [Horschel] and Keith [Mitchell], both great ball strikers, both great players. I just saw they’re going to the 18th as we came in. So, those are both going to be tough matches. I need to clean some things up, but if I can keep it stress-free and maybe make a few more putts, it would be nice.”
Walking in a walk off
If you gave me 10 guesses as to who would have won their first match in a walk-off chip-in, I would have guessed Jordan Spieth for the first seven. And I would have been correct all seven times. Spieth beat Mackenzie Hughes on the 15th hole 4 & 3 with this shot.
Spieth went on to call the shot…
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Source : cbssports
