MARANA, Ariz. — Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy is not a serious gearhead. He knows things that any professional golfer needs to know, like his ideal launch angle and spin rate off the tee, and he has a modest collection of about 15 Scotty Cameron putters and headcovers at home, but he does not tinker or dabble with equipment too often.

However, before starting his 2010 season, McIIroy pulled his Titleist ZM irons out of the bag and started using Titleist’s new MB irons.

He’d first seen and hit the clubs in Akron, Ohio, before the start of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, but decided to stick with his old sticks rather than make a mid-season change.

“I had six weeks off at the end of my season,” he told me. “During that time I went out and tested [the MB irons] again. I knew that I like them, but they were a little bit softer than my ZMs and I found that they don’t go quite as far. But the feel is quite a lot better, which is good for me because I’m a feel player.”

McIlroy also noticed that the MB irons didn’t send his shots quite as high as his old irons, which as a high-spin player he felt was a positive.

For competitors here at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, the idea of a more-accurate Rory McIlroy is a scary thought. He had the lowest scoring average on the European Tour last season (69.51) and ranked third in green in regulation (78.1%).

But if McIlroy is going to win here this week, he’s going to need to hole more putts. He averaged more than 30 per round last season, so this week he’s going back to a Scotty Cameron Studio Select Newport Fastback that has been customized for him with a shaft that goes straight into the head near the center of the topline.

Here is a complete list of the clubs that McIlroy has in his bag this week:
DRIVER: Titleist 909 D2 (8.5) with a Fujikura Rombax 7V05 shaft
FAIRWAY WOODS: Titleist 909 F2 (13.5) with a Project X 7A3 shaft, 906 F3 (18.5) with a Fujikura FitOn 11 Pro 95 shaft
IRONS: Titleist MB (3-9) with Project X 6.5 shafts
WEDGES: Titleist Vokey Design Spin Milled C-C (48, 54, 58) with Project X 6.5 shafts
PUTTER: Titleist Scotty Cameron Newport Fastback Select prototype
BALL: Titleist Pro V1x

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(Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

Golf at the highest level has become such a global game it’s tougher than ever to pinpoint the best professional tour, the most fertile country for world-class players, the most impressive young talent, or even, in the absence of Tiger Woods, the top player.

With Woods out indefinitely, the game is a land grab contested by old reliables like Kenny Perry, 49, Steve Stricker, 42, and Vijay Singh, 46; global stars like Padraig Harrington and Geoff Ogilvy; and several would-be No. 1s including (but not limited to) Ryo Ishikawa, Dustin Johnson, Martin Kaymer, Rory McIlroy and Michael Sim.

No tournament better exemplifies the game’s current state than the frenzied free-for-all that is the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at 7,849-yard Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Marana, Ariz., starting Wednesday. “There are no easy draws in this event,” said Lee Westwood, the second seed this week, who will play countryman Chris Wood in the first round. “[These are the] top players in the world. So everybody’s quite capable of shooting a 63 or 62 out there.”

The Accenture will mark the first truly global gathering of the year, a season in which one of the biggest stories has been the shift in the balance of power between the U.S. and Europe. While fields on the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing have been largely unremarkable and at times dismal, the European Tour has flourished. That’s only partly because of American players traveling overseas for appearance fees. More importantly it owes to a new look atop the World Ranking that’s been years in the making. Of the top 20 players in the ranking, only six are Americans, and two (Woods and the vacationing Phil Mickelson) are not in the field this week.

Nine years after he won the tournament as the 55 seed, Stricker takes the top seed into the Accenture, but the prohibitive favorite is Ogilvy, a two-time Accenture winner and three-time finalist who has racked up an incredible 17-2 career record in this event.

Then again, perhaps the favorite is England’s Ross Fisher, who advanced to the tournament’s final four last season and later won the Volvo World Match Play.

The favorite certainly wouldn’t seem to be Westwood, who has never advanced past the second round in nine Accenture starts, many of his losses coming in extra holes. Unlike those years, though, he is coming into this week on a good note, having won the Race to Dubai to end 2009 and notched two top-three finishes in his last two starts.

When Westwood left home Sunday, and his 5-year-old daughter Poppy asked him when he would return, he wasn’t sure what to tell her and her older brother Samuel. “I said, ‘Historically, Thursday; optimistically, Monday,’ ” he said at his press conference at Dove Mountain, prompting laughter. “They looked at me quizzically.”

Theories on match play run the gamut. Do you play the man or the course? Is gamesmanship important, and how is it best and most subtly deployed?

Johnson, coming off his victory at Pebble Beach, said on Tuesday that he didn’t know and didn’t much care who he’s playing beyond Camilo Villegas in the first round. The assembled media were incredulous; hadn’t he bothered to look at a bracket? “If one is sitting next to me at breakfast, of course I’ll look at it,” Johnson said. “But I’m not going to go out of my way to find the bracket to see who is in it. Everyone here is good. They don’t make it here because of a fluke. So it really doesn’t matter who you’re playing, it’s going to be a tough match and you’re going to have to play well.”

The winner of the Johnson-Villegas match will play either Alexander Noren of Sweden or the one guy everyone would just as soon avoid in Tucson: Ogilvy. That said, it’s conceivable that Ogilvy hasn’t been getting much quality sleep or practice time. His wife Juli delivered the couple’s third child, Harvey Jack Ogilvy, last Thursday.

Most intriguing at the Accenture are the rookies, who will show soon enough what they think of the quirky format. Ishikawa and Sim play each other for the right to face Stricker or Ross McGowan in the second round. Ryan Moore, a match-play terror as an amateur, will face Ernie Els, a match-play terror in Wentworth, England.

As always in this format, someone will shoot 66 and lose, and someone will card a 73 and win. “I think you need more luck in match play than in stroke play,” Westwood said. “You can’t ease your way around-you have to come out all guns blazing.”

• In other action on the PGA Tour, David Duval tries to maintain momentum from last week’s runner-up finish at the Mayakoba Classic in Cancun, Mexico, golf’s version of the NIT. The Mayakoba, played at one of the sweetest spots if not the sweetest spot on the Tour schedule, is famous for reviving careers, most notably that of 2008 champion Brian Gay, who went on to win twice on Tour in 2009 and is in the field for this week’s Accenture.

• Speaking of coming out with guns blazing, the LPGA Tour kicks off at the Honda PTT LPGA Thailand this week. Number one-ranked Lorena Ochoa, the defending champion, headlines a strong field that also includes No. 2 Jiyai Shin, Michelle Wie, Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel and Christina Kim. The Honda PTT will mark the beginning of the LPGA’s new agreement with the Golf Channel, which will give the circuit a much-needed permanent home.

• On the Champions Tour, Tommy Armour III will try to stay hot at the Allianz Championship, starting Friday at The Old Course at Broken Sound in Boca Raton, Fla. Armour shot a final-round 61 to finish runner-up in his Champions debut at the ACE Group Classic last week. Michael Allen, who tied for fifth place at the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open last month, and Bernhard Langer are also in the field.

MARANA, Ariz. — The WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship has 64 entrants and beautiful brackets just waiting to be filled in like the NCAA Basketball tournament. The difference is, there are no gimmes in match play golf.

Eighteen holes are not enough for the best players to separate themselves from the rest of the field. Even 72-hole events usually have a dozen players within four or five strokes of the winner.

So picking the winners of 18-hole matches, mere sprints, is unlikely. Any player in this field, which features the world’s best available 64 golfers, can shoot 63 on any given day. Tiger Woods has fallen to the likes of Peter O’Malley, Nick O’Hern, Tim Clark and Chad Campbell.

Enough with the alibis. Here, then, are the key matches and predictions on how the first round may turn out. (Wednesday’s schedule is here.)

Jones Bracket: It’s a great day when Steve Stricker, the pride of Edgerton, Wis., is the No. 1-seeded player in the field. As a former Match Play champ and No. 1 seed, Stricker literally is the guy to beat this week. He’ll get past Ross McGowan into the second round … Ryo Ishikawa and Michael Sim square off in what is this bracket’s marquee match. Ishikawa is already a superstar in his home country of Japan while Sim is the best player you still haven’t heard of. Sim wins.

Upset special: Masters champ Angel Cabrera gets surprised by the no-longer-slumping Adam Scott of Australia. Scott’s form is coming around. He broke his drought by winning in Australia during the winter (their summer).

More predictions: Ian Poulter was a Ryder Cup ace for captain Nick Faldo, and he’ll need all that skill to edge past Justin Leonard, who has finished fourth and fifth in the last two Match Plays. He’s a tough out … Anthony Kim gets the nod over Matt Kuchar … Other winners will be Robert Karlsson; Thongchai Jaidee, who played well in Dubai; and Padraig Harrington, frequently a slow starter.

Hogan Bracket: Martin Kaymer of Germany is seeded first, and he’s my pick to win the whole tournament. It may be Kaymer versus Henrik Stenson in the final. The guy won in the desert already on the European Tour. He’s long, perfect for this course, and he seems to hole more long putts — or at least come close — than anybody on either tour. He’ll beat Chad Campbell.

Upset special: Rory McIlroy, the Irish boy wonder, was fifth in his Match Play debut last year. He’s been bothered by a bad back the last few weeks, however. Beware the sick golfer? In this case, look for underrated Kevin Na to knock off Rory

More predictions: Tim Clark, former Tiger-killer, keeps getting better with age. So did Vijay Singh up to a point. Clark takes him down … Other match-winners will be Lucas Glover, Oliver Wilson (mild upset over Dubai winner Miguel Angel Jimenez), Robert Allenby and Luke Donald.

Player Bracket: The one match to watch here is Pebble Beach winner Dustin Johnson, potentially the breakout American star, versus Camilo Villegas, Colombia’s greatest golfer. Johnson played well on the whole West Coast swing, so he’s hot and confident. Go with Johnson.

Upset special: Soren Kjeldsen of Sweden is one of those guys who doesn’t beat himself. Very steady. He’s going to surprise PGA champion Y.E. Yang, who had a busy offseason and not much time to recover.

More predictions: Geoff Ogilvy, defending champion, should eliminate Sweden’s Alexander Noren. Ogilvy has a tough road. Assuming my picks are right, he’ll face Dustin Johnson in the second round, and possibly Henrik Stenson in the third … Ryan Moore, who is playing well, has a good chance against match play vet Ernie Els, but look for Els to hold on, maybe in extra holes … Nick Watney plays Uta Ikeda (no relation to the cheap-o furniture outlets). Watney is the superior ballstriker … Other winners should be Lee Westwood and Henrik Stenson.

Snead Bracket: It’ll be fun to watch monster-long Alvaro Quiros play not-so-long-hitting Mike Weir. Weir is very good at match play, but this desert course really rewards length, so Quiros is the pick.

Upset special: It’s hard to call it an upset, but Brian Gay, another not-long hitter, takes out power-hitting Kenny Perry.

More predictions: Really interesting match between two finesse players, Jim Furyk and Scott Verplank. It’s anybody’s guess, and I’ll guess Furyk … Charl Schwartzel has already won twice on the European tour so he seems hotter than Hunter Mahan … Stewart Cink and Zach Johnson will beat the Molinari brothers of Italy, Edoardo and Francesco … Other winners are Sean O’Hair and last year’s runner up, Paul Casey.

In other predictions, I’m calling for sunny and warm weather for Tucson this week … and also for the next nine straight months. Yeah, crazy stuff.

MARANA, Ariz. — The controversy sparked by Phil Mickelson, John Daly and other golfers who recently started using Ping Eye2 wedges made before 1990 has created a problem for Hunter Mahan.

Mahan has been using a pre-1990 58° Ping Eye2 lob wedge for years. He likes the look and feel of the club, but this week at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship he would be the only player in the field using an “old groove” Eye2.

That doesn’t sit well with Mahan, because he knows that if he does well using the old wedge some people might question whether his success was due to his skill or the grooves.

So this week Mahan has been practicing with an Eye2 lob wedge that is identical to his old club except that it contains grooves that conform to the new USGA standards. Tuesday morning on the range he had three Eye2 wedges in his bag. The two copper-colored clubs in the photo have the old grooves. The silver-colored wedge that you can partially see has the new grooves. 

“I don’t want the focus to be on the grooves,” he told me. “It’s really kind of unfortunate, but right now the players are taking the blame for all of this.”

Mahan said he has not made up his mind which club he is going to use in his match Wednesday against South Africa’s Charl Schwartzel. But from his tone and body language, I sensed that he really wants to avoid any controversy.

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(Photo by David Dusek)

Welcome to the latest edition of Fantasy Fix, where we count ourselves among the minority that actually cares about
the Mayakoba Golf Classic. Yes, that’s right, we’ve reached our first double-dip week,
where the upper echelon of the PGA Tour makes its way to the WGC-Accenture
Match Play Championship event, while others play in a tournament that will
be jockeying for airtime in between a bunch of infomercials on the Golf
Channel. For fantasy golf purposes, however, most formats make Mayakoba the
main event for the week, so that’s where we’ll shift our attention.

But before we bid adieu to the big guns, a couple thoughts on the action in
Arizona in case you can still pick up points in your league for this
match play tournament. Remember, in a one-and-done format, anyone can beat
anyone on any given day, which can lead to some, let’s just say,
less-than-scintillating matchups. I mean, who can forget that 2002 final in
which Kevin Sutherland defeated Scott McCarron? To make things worse, the 1-up margin of victory actually meant viewers were subjected to watching 36 holes between those two.

The point is, in a situation where the worst player in the field is
separated from the best by about one stroke per round, you may as well swing
for the fences. Here are some non-No. 1 seeds (Martin Kaymer is a No. 1
seed?!) that I am predicting to make deep runs: Rory McIlroy, Tim
Clark (duh), Ian Poulter and Charl Schwartzel.

Now back to the important tournament in Mexico, where golfers who miss the
cut can drive about a half hour north to take shots of tequila with spring
breakers in Cancun. Those who manage the hang around will be vying for a $3.6 million purse, so let’s get to it:

STUDS

Mark Wilson: If you knew that this guy was the defending champion at
El Camaleon Golf Club, then there are only three conclusions that can be
made:
1. You are a relative of Wilson (Least likely)
2. You are a fantasy golf fanatic (More likely)
3. You seriously need to get out of the house (Most likely).

In case you don’t fall into any of those categories, I’ll fill you in by
informing you that Wilson held off J.J. Henry by two shots to claim
his second career win on the PGA Tour. OK, so maybe it counted as No. 1.5.

Then there’s Heath Slocum. Despite his David-vs.-Goliath-like
performance last year in winning the Barclays, the first leg of the FedExCup
Playoffs, normally, he would fall under the “Sleepers” category. However,
this week, he’s the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 77, meaning he
gets to walk around like he owns the joint.

And how can you not give David Duval a chance here. I pumped him up
early in the season and like many others, he came through — just a couple
weeks late. Duval certainly looked back in top form this past week at Pebble
Beach, where he nearly came out on top as others around him did their best to
give it away.

His performance marked the first time since the 2001 Buick Challenge that he
posted four rounds in the 60s of a four-round event. At that point, he was
still one of the top-ranked players on the planet. While he still needs a telescope to see the golfer currently perched there, the T-2 did move him from 205th to 104th in the latest edition of the world rankings.

I’m sure D.D. has his eyes on being in the top 64 by this time next year so
he can play in the match play, but for now, take advantage of him
playing against this watered-down field. In fact, taking chalk here does
appear the way to go. Despite never getting top-flight talent, the Mayakoba
has produced fairly recognizable winners all three years its been around in
Wilson, Brian Gay and Fred Funk.

To that point, I’m looking to K.J. Choi (Who has been doing this column
proud since I started pumping him up a few weeks back) and Charles Howell
III. Choi has made the cut in all four of his events thus far and CH3
already has two top-10 finishes to his credit. So, too, does D.J. Trahan,
including one last week, and Kevin Stadler’s T-10 at Riviera shows he’s in
fine form and capable of taking a celebratory dip in Caribbean. Not that
anyone needs to see that.

DUDS

Carlos Franco: You’d think the native of Paraguay would enjoy playing
a little closer to home, but instead, he’s been a complete disaster. On the
bright side, Franco has only missed the cut at this event three times. On
the dark side, the tournament has only been around for three years.