Blog: Win or lose, Jones is excited to meet and face Tiger Woods

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Editor's note: Brendan Jones, who has won once on the Nationwide Tour and eight times on the Japan Tour, drew Wednesday's marquee match with Tiger Woods at 2:02 p.m. ET. The 35-year-old Aussie took time out from a busy day of interviews to do a blog for PGATOUR.COM.

MARANA, Ariz. -- This is the time of year for me when I normally don't touch a golf club for a month or two. The Australasian Tour season is over and the Japan Tour doesn't start until mid-April so I'm spending the offseason at home in New South Wales with my wife Adele and our son, Kieran. My golf in the last four weeks or so had been limited to some Wednesday matches with my buddies at the club.

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Brendan Jones has had several restless nights since learning he would play Tiger Woods in the first round.

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That changed last Tuesday, though, when I found out I was No. 64 in the Official World Golf Ranking and had made the field for the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship. We had some landscapers out at the house really early that day and my wife got a text from one of her friends saying that she thought I was No. 64. I knew I was close and when it came out that I was in, I knew I had to start getting my game in shape. I usually don't practice a lot unless I am really struggling with some part of my game. I think you get a lot more out of playing. But if I was going to be playing in front of the world, I didn't want to disgrace myself.

My wife's mother rang us later in the week and told us she'd heard Tiger was playing. So then I really started to get a little nervous about it. There had been some speculation and when I realized I actually had the matchup with Tiger I started to get quite excited. I knew it was possible, but in the back of my head I thought, well, I might get Sergio, I might get Padraig. Anyone would have been great to play but having never played with Tiger, I thought it was a great opportunity. I've never even met Tiger Woods and now I'm playing him in the first round. I've never been a good sleeper anyway, and I've had a few restless nights since I've found out. But there was work to be done. I flew to the States on Friday. I put some new clubs in the bag so I did some testing at the Callaway center at Carlsbad, Calif., and then drove over to Tucson on Saturday. This is going to be a pretty wild week for me.

One of the biggest things will be getting over the aura of him. I know Greg Norman in his prime -- well, there's still an aura about Greg now -- and Tiger has that same thing. If you can get around the fact that he's created so much history and he's probably the most famous person, apart from presidents, in the world; if you can get your head about that, then he's just like me and you. We're all humans, but he's very good at what he does. I just hope I'm not star struck by it all. I'd like to have a chance to introduce myself to him tomorrow and try to make light of it all so I don't just turn up on the first tee Wednesday. It's all business on Wednesday. It would be a little bit more low key to meet him tomorrow. So if I see him I'm going to make sure I go up and introduce myself.

I haven't gotten a lot of advice. Everyone keeps saying it's match play and anything can happen. People are also telling me to enjoy it -- you have nothing to lose, nobody expects you to win so just go do your best. That's all I can do. I'm not going to make any statements and say I'm going to win because that's very unrealistic. I don't want to do what Stephen Ames did and upset him. I want to meet him and try to be nice and at the end of the day, win, lose or draw, if I could have a drink or go out to lunch, it would be nice.

A lot of people back home and here in the gallery have kidded with me, though. They say if it things don't work out, kick him in the leg. But I'm a nice person and I don't want to be known as the guy who kicked Tiger in the knee and put him out of action for a while. Rod Pampling yelled something from across the fairway yesterday that I couldn't quite make out, but I knew it had something to do with the match I had. I think I'm in a fantastic position in that no one expects me to win. I can go out and get beat 7 and 6 and everybody expects that. But if I put up a good show and somehow happen to win, then it will just be an unbelievable thing for me and my career.

I've played the last two days to have a look at the course. It's a very long course to walk so I'm feeling a bit tired now. Tuesday I'll play nine holes and just hit a few balls. I don't want to wear myself out physically before I have to play. Even if I was to win, to beat Tiger, I'll be drained after that match regardless. So I want to try and stay as fresh as I can be and hopefully I'm here for more than one day. It will be a long course for Tiger, too. It's going to be interesting to see how his knee holds up if he does go quite a distance in the tournament because it does get into 36 holes on Saturday, I believe. I've got two good legs and I'm already knocked up and it's just Monday. But obviously, he believes he's fit enough to handle it. So I would wish him all the best, and it's good to have Tiger back because people are talking about golf again.

I know it's going to be difficult to stay focused on Wednesday. Everybody will be watching Tiger. I'm just a guy who's playing with Tiger. I've got to try and just stay away from all the fanfare. It's just my caddy and me out there. I'm sure there might be one or two Australians out there rooting for me but I've got to try and stay away from all the hoopla that surrounds Tiger. And if I should win, it would be the greatest thing golfing-wise that's happened to me. I've won tournaments before and that's fantastic but to somehow beat the best player, maybe of all time, one-on-one, that would be unbelievable.