No playoff? No problem, players say of Match Play round-robin format

Russell Knox during first round of WGC-Dell Match Play. ( Getty Images )AUSTIN, Texas — Russell Knox knows nothing about it being a tweak to the format. He only knows that 18 holes “was quite a lot of golf and I wouldn’t have wanted to play any more holes.”

So with that, Knox shook hands with David Lingmerth, the two of them officially in the record books as having tied their first-round match in the WGC-Dell Match Play at Austin Country Club.

Since they are both rookies in this WGC, neither Knox nor Lingmerth knew that matches ending in a halve is new. Last year, the first using the round-robin format, officials insisted that matches that were tied at 18 would go into a playoff. Four games…