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With the End of the WGC Match Play, Here’s an Unheard Story of an Alleged Blunder During the Tournament in 2014

Published 03/26/2023, 1:29 PM EDT

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The WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play is finally over with its last season with Rory McIlroy’s unforgettable victory. The tournament definitely holds huge importance among golf fans. And witnessing the final season of the event has left thousands of golf enthusiasts pretty emotional. Adding to the memories of the special tournament, famous OWGR guru, Nosferatu, shared a story worth knowing about!

Nosferatu shares an unheard OWGR story

Fans love finding out all kinds of interesting tales about their favorite golfers as well as important tournaments. And OWGR guru, Nosferatu, has the best ones in stock for them. He recently discussed how much fans are going to miss the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play tournament since its last season has finally come to an end. And while talking about it, the Twitter user opened up about an incident he couldn’t resist discussing with the fans.

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It was February 2014 when he sent the updated World Rankings of professional golfers followed by his projected matches for the first round of the WGC Match Play. “All was fine and I was happy with the job and with the interest, I was getting…” he mentioned. “There was however a small detail that made me nervous. Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia were projected in a tie sharing places 8&9 based on #OWGR’s rule at the time of using 4 decimal point precision for the official average points.”

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According to him, the average points of both Garcia and Johnson were equal up to four decimal places – 8/9. Dustin 5.8200, 8/9. Sergio 5.8200! He recalled that in 2014, the old WGC MP system was in use. This meant that there were no draws or pools, and the players had to get into knockout matches. And therefore, the ranking of these players was extremely essential. But in this case, they needed to find a better solution.

Since there was no set rule for such a situation, the OWGR guru decided to use “common sense” to calculate his projection. “I decided based on common sense that I will separate the two players based on the 5th decimal…” he wrote. And it worked!

According to his calculations, he reached a conclusion where Johnson got 5.81997 points, while Garcia was at 5.81996 points. And that led him to project first rounds between Dustin Johnson – Marc Leishman, and Sergio Garcia – Craig Hanson. His projection was entirely based on how OWGR would have calculated it.

However, he was only a moment away from realizing something extremely shocking. “And shock/horror, it was projecting the opposite, Sergio ahead of Dustin!” he added. According to the official projection, Garcia was at 5.82000 points, while Johnson was at 5.81998 points. And it was the same day that OWGR posted the final matches for the first round. And it showed exactly what Nosferatu feared – Sergio v Leishman, and Dustin v Hanson!

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He knew he could not do anything to change the official announcement by OWGR. And so, he issues an informal apology to his fans on Twitter saying he would post a new update with corrected rankings. However, he knew his method of calculating the duos was more accurate than OWGR.

Not just that, he also mentioned how the 2014 WGC Match Play “had the wrong players competing against each other!!” Hanson was able to beat Johnson, while Garcia won the game against Leishman, but later lost against Fowler in the third round. As per his thoughts, the results could have been way different if the pairings were done according to his mathematical method. However, he concluded that the OWGR used their method for making the decision, and there was nothing wrong with it.

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Well, such minor issues in calculations by the biggest golf organizations can sometimes lead to huge blunders for the players. And not to forget, fans will never get to know what went wrong on the inside. Thankfully, there are people like Nosferatu to bring out the truth in the form of interesting stories for the fans!

Watch This Story: Rory McIlroy Makes a Staggering Confession About the PGA Tour

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Written by:

Joydeep Singh

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Joydeep Singh is a Golf writer at EssentiallySports. Having completed his Bachelor's degree in Business Management, he possesses a writing experience of more than four years now. Having picked up on following golf for quite some time now, his favorite is the legendary Tiger Woods, whose games he just does not miss.
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Edited by:

Manaal Siddiqui

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