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By Dave Shedloski
PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent

If golf weren't so rich with irony, one could more easily discern its penchant for poetic justice. While the former is likely to nose its way into the proceedings at this week's World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship, the latter already has established a beachhead by definition of three key measures of success: location, location, location.

The ninth Accenture Match Play brings full circle the historically significant role Tucson, Ariz., has played in golf. Tucson has hosted a PGA TOUR event since 1945, with Arnold Palmer, Jimmy Demaret, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson and Johnny Miller headline champions. Watson was among several notables to win there twice -- but is the lone player in history to take both a stroke-play title, in 1978, and then capture one of the three trophies awarded during a stretch of match play competition. Watson won the first Seiko-Tucson Match Play Championship in 1984. Jim Thorpe was the '85 and '86 champ.

Since 1999 and the advent of the WGC series, however, Tucson's tournament has been the secondary event to the Accenture Match Play Championship. Now the city that once hosted a match play tournament, and then was played opposite one gets to host the top 64 players in the world for the $8 million slugfest of one-on-one competitions.

Tradition, it seems, never forgets its orphans.

The game's top-ranked players get to break in a new layout, the Gallery at Dove Mountain's South Course, designed by John Fought and inspired by Donald Ross. Wide playing corridors bordered by desert scrub lead to moderately sized push up greens reminiscent of Ross' signature course, Pinehurst No. 2 in the Sandhills of North Carolina. While this suggests a stern second-shot test, consider that all four par-5 holes are reachable in two shots and three par-4s might be reached from the tee.

Nevertheless, most matches, like most stroke-play tournaments, come down to who can make the most clutch putts. Davis Love III, who has the unique distinction of being the only player in the WGC field who competed in the Seiko-Tucson Match Play, says he'd rather be sinking putts than stinging drivers and irons.

"Putting well is really the key," says Love, who has reached the final twice and is 18-8 overall. "Making a few putts that maybe you aren't supposed to make can be really hard on your opponent and puts a lot of pressure on him. Whether it's a putt to win a hole or halve a hole, just knocking down a few forces him to work for everything he's going to get."

With 64 of the top 65 players in the world rankings present, everyone is going to have to work. This week is a physical and a mental grind that requires an extra day (matches start Wednesday) and potentially 36 holes or more the final three rounds. With $8 million on the table, no one can say it's not worth it.

Worth knowing:

Confidence in the top seeds has consistently been misplaced in the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. Only twice has the No. 1 overall seed won it: Tiger Woods. Only twice in eight years have the semifinals been populated by players ranked in the top 10. Meanwhile, 11 times a seed worse than 40th advanced to the final four, and last year's semis saw seeds 23, 41, 52 and 59 in the semis. The top four seeds have reached the finals four times, winning twice, while seeds 50 or higher have won three times while reaching the finals on four occasions.

Speaking of Woods, who is going for his eighth PGA TOUR win in a row, he sports a sterling 23-5 record in the WGC-Accenture Match Play and has 12 wins overall in the WGC series.

After Woods, the two most attractive players in the match play field might be David Toms and Adam Scott. They are the lone players with at least five starts who have never lost in the first round. Scott has been 17th or better in all five appearances. Toms, the 2005 winner, has reached the third round each of the last fives years and has won at least one match in all seven starts. Toms is 20-6 and Scott 12-5.

Ernie Els, winner of several HSBC Match Play titles, might be a prohibitive favorite this week, but history is working against him as the No. 5 seed. In eight years the fifth seeds have racked up an untidy 6-8 combined record and no fifth seed has ever reached the semifinals. The second poorest record belongs to 12 seeds (7-8).

Stuart Appleby continues to keep alive his streak of playing in every WGC event since the inception of the series, and he is the only man with perfect attendance in the match play field, but he's a mere 4-8 with five losses in the first round.

How good has the international competition become on the PGA TOUR? In 1999 there were 40 Americans among the 64 players in the first WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. This year there are only 22, though three of the top four seeds are U.S. players -- Tiger Woods (1), Jim Furyk (2), and Phil Mickelson (4).

More props for the international contingent: Woods may have won his last seven starts on the PGA TOUR, but he hasn't won on another tour in over a year since the Dubai Desert Classic on the European Tour last February.

Charles Howell III has regained the points lead in the FedExCup standings after his playoff victory over Phil Mickelson at the Nissan Open, and he's already the TOUR Insider's pick for Comeback Player of the Year. Lest we forget, it was less than a year ago that Howell finished last at the Masters and wasn't even Low Charles; former Masters champ Charles Coody beat him by a stroke (and Gary Player beat him by three). Now he's whooping on everyone.

This isn't easy to do: Phil Mickelson has held the lead in seven of his last eight rounds, has been in first place after 72 holes each of the last two weeks, and is a combined 36 under par in that span -- and yet he has only one win to show for it.

Were it not for a bum shoulder that forced his withdrawal from the Malaysian Open, Michael Campbell might be a decent choice this week, given his U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst No. 2 in 2005. Other players nursing injuries include Tim Clark (neck) and Rory Sabbatini (back). Clark has yet to play this year.

While Love is the only man in the WGC field who competed in the last Seiko-Tucson Match Play in 1986, five others from that tournament are heading to Mexico this week: Mark Calcavecchia, John Cook, David Frost, Jeff Sluman and Bob Tway.

Tway will be looking to break a bit of a jinx in Mexico. Twice he has finished third in the Mexican Open, and he was runner-up to Stewart Cink in the '96 edition.

TOUR veteran Esteban Toledo, a native of Mexicali, Mexico, received a sponsor exemption into the Mayakoba Classic. Toledo, who represented Mexico five times in the WGC-World Cup, won the Mexican Open in 2000. Other former Mexican Open champs in the field include Tommy Armour (1983), Fred Funk ('94), Cook ('95), plus current Mexican Open champ Fabrizio Zanotti of Paraguay.

Irony personified is Garrett Willis, who won the 2001 Chrysler Classic of Tucson in his PGA TOUR debut opposite the WGC-Accenture Match Play and now gets his second start of '07 by going to Mexico in what is the opposite-field event to the match play tournament in Tucson. In his only other start, the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Willis tied for 25th, his first top-25 since at tie for 20th at the '05 John Deere Classic.