This made sensational look a hopeless inadequate descripton. Padraig Harrington and Ian Woosnam produced golf of the highest order in the first half of the final of the Cisco World Match Play Championship, not so much breaking records as smashing great holes in them.
Woosnam had seven birdies in succession to equal his best mark in the competition and the 28 strokes he played over the front nine was a tournament record. Harrington, in coruscating form all week, did brilliantly well not to be utterly blown away by the brilliance of his veteran Welsh opponent. To reach the turn only three down was a superb effort - he took only 31 to get
there himself.
The players succeeded in achieving the near-impossible task of improving on what had gone before in this most remarkable of Match Plays. Harrington had scattered all before him in reaching the final, while Woosnam had already beaten Retief Goosen, Colin Montgomerie and Lee Westwood on his way to his fourth final, so fireworks might have been expected - but nobody could have
predicted this.
Harrington struck the first blow by winning the first, one of the great opening holes in golf, but then came Woosnam's purple patch. He single-putted seven of the next eight greens from distances that varied from six to 16 feet, striking his irons as well as he did when he won the Masters a decade ago.
His Irish opponent had four birdies of his own as Woosnam reduced the opening half to rubble and, having weathering the storm, Harrington mounted
an offensive of his own as they started the long journey home. He birdied the first four holes of the inward half to move from three down to one up after 13 holes.
The closing holes was a real cut-and-thrust affair, with holes changing hands at the 15th, 16th and 17th, the last of which produced about the only bad shot of the approximate 125 they hit between them. It was Woosnam who hit it, hitting his drive into trees and having to settle for a bogey six to Harrington's birdie four.
After what had gone before, matching birdies at the last were virtually an inevitability. It had been one of the all-time great mornings in the 38 championships in the series. They had 20 birdies between them; it was surely
asking too much that they could keep it up. But then, we've been saying that for the last four days.
