Pettersson relishes prospect of Woods challenge

An injury to Vijay Singh has given Swede Carl Pettersson the chance to claim the biggest scalp in golf on Wednesday – Tiger Woods, of course.

Mon, 24 Feb, 2003 - 08:59

An injury to Vijay Singh has given Swede Carl Pettersson the chance to claim the biggest scalp in golf on Wednesday – Tiger Woods, of course.

Minutes after finishing the Nissan Open in Los Angeles in 37th place yesterday Pettersson, originally the third reserve, was told that fourth seed Singh had pulled out of this week’s Accenture world match play championship with rib trouble.

Instead of flying to North Carolina to oversee the building of his new home the 25-year-old instead headed down the California coast to Carlsbad.

Just eight days ago Pettersson, joint 21st at the US Tour qualifying school in December, finished second to Woods at the Buick Invitational. But he has never played a round with the world number one.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I’m happy it’s Tiger I’m playing - there will be no pressure on me and it should be extremely exciting. A challenge.

“I watched Tiger lose to Peter O’Malley in the first round last year. Anything can happen in 18 holes match play.”

With Toru Taniguchi and Nick Faldo (’flu) also having scratched from the 64-man field in the past week, Woods has gone from facing Robert Karlsson to Phil Tataurangi to Pettersson.

It makes no difference to the Masters and US Open champion, who lost the 2000 final to Ireland's Darren Clarke and has also gone down to Jeff Maggert as well as O’Malley.

“You can shoot 65 and lose – that’s the quality we have in the sport now and that’s match play. It’s hard,” said Woods.

“You can’t put yourself behind the eight-ball early on. You have to get off to a positive start because it’s difficult to come back.

“But I’m looking forward to it too. Carl and I spoke in the locker room this week (Pettersson wanted to know the chances of Woods playing in Sweden because of his girlfriend), he played well in the Open last year and it should be a good match.”

With some very bad memories of the Ryder Cup as well, of course, Woods wishes the event was over 36 holes like the Wentworth version of the Match Play, knowing that the longer distance favours the better player more.

But he was just happy last night that he had produced a closing 65 at the Nissan to move up from 28th to joint fifth. That was only three shots behind winner Mike Weir, who beat Charles Howell at the second hole of a play-off for his second win in four weeks.

Woods’ hopes of starting the season with two wins following his knee surgery effectively disappeared when he managed only a Saturday 73 after going out of bounds with his first shot.

On his best-of-the-day closing round he said: “I played a lot better and made a lot of putts. You put those two things together and you’re going to be doing all right.”

Darren Clarke was upbeat as well after two 68s lifted him to joint 10th. On Friday he had survived the halfway cut with nothing to spare.

Clarke, who now meets South African Tim Clark rather than Justin Rose in Wednesday’s first round (presuming there are no more withdrawals before the draw), said: “I had three good days and one bad one.

“Overall I’m very pleased with the way things are going. I’m looking forward to going back to La Costa.” He won the million-dollar first prize in 2000, beating Woods four and three in the final to round off the best week of his career.

The Ulsterman has recently gone back to Woods’ coach Butch Harmon for help and added: “Butch will be there and hopefully I’ll keep improving. I’m really on the right lines.”

Singh’s rib injury totally changes the draw. Colin Montgomerie was expecting to face fellow Scot Paul Lawrie, but now he takes on German Alex Cejka while Lawrie plays Nick Price. Rose switches from Clarke to 2001 Open champion David Duval.

If there are no more scratchings the rearranged draw is as follows (seeded positions in brackets):

(1) Tiger Woods (US) v (64) Carl Pettersson (Swe);

(32) KJ Choi (S Kor) v (33) Fred Funk (US);

(16) Justin Leonard (US) v (49) Jose Maria Olazabal (Spa);

(17) Bob Estes (US) v (48) Stephen Leaney (Aus);

(8) Padraig Harrington (Ire) v (57) John Cook (US);

(25) Scott Hoch (US) v (40) Tom Lehman (US);

(9) Chris DiMarco (US) v (56) Toshi Izawa (Jap);

(24) Eduardo Romero (Arg) v (41) John Huston (US)

(4) Retief Goosen (Rsa) v (61) Jay Haas (US);

(29) Shigeki Maruyama (Jap) v (36) Scott McCarron (US);

(13) Nick Price (Zim) v (52) Paul Lawrie (Gbr);