Statistics do not always tell the complete story; indeed, they can often be more misleading than informative. But try this one for size: as they reached the halfway point of the final in the Cisco World Match Play Championship on Sunday, Colin Montgomerie and Mark O'Meara had played 176 holes of golf between them, and they were a collective 47 under par. That's how good the golf has been in one of the best World Match Plays for years.
With five holes to play on yet another gloriously sunny morning at Wentworth's West Course Montgomerie was five up, only for the dogged O'Meara, feeling less pain from the neck injury that had bothered him in his first two matches, to pull back to only a three-hole deficit as they went in for their lunch, The American does not know the meaning of the word surrender.
Montgomerie landed the first blow in a match that had been eagerly awaited when he birdied the first hole to O'Meara's bogey. He also won the par-three second with another birdie and took the sixth with a 40-foot birdie putt.
The Scot had only his third bogey in the 72 holes he had played thus far when he three-putted from 50 feet at the seventh, but restored his three-hole lead at the tenth and extended it to four on the 11th after putting a pitching wedge to a foot.
Four became five with a birdie putt from five feet on the 13th, but then came O'Meara's fightback. He birdied the long 17th with a birdie four, then eagled the home hole with a drive and a three-iron to five feet. he did not have to putt it out -- Montgomerie, who had his his three-wood drive a foot into the deep rough and had to settle for chipping out onto the short stuff.
