The brackets for this week’s World Match Play Championship came out and what do you know, Rory Sabbatini finds himself in Tiger Woods’ quarter of the draw. This is like one of those NCAA Tournament brackets where they try to set up a matchup between a coach and his former school or between Duke and somebody who despises Coach K’s fakeness (which is really most sane people when you think about it).

As enlightened thinking as this is though, it faces one big problem: Sabbatini. Both he and Tiger have to win three matches to set up the fourth-round dream. Now, with Tiger on his unspoken drive for an undefeated season (copyright William K. Wolfrum, all rights reserved - including T-shirts and cheap coffee mugs), there’s no need to worry about him. Even if Tiger did just release one of those nonsensical Yogi Berra-worthy quotes - “Match play is like a boat race” - on his website.

Sabbatini though is a completely different matter. He’s as dependable on stuff like this as Lawrence Taylor used to be about staying awake (or anywhere close to clear headed) in team meetings. Sabbatini already completely ruined the first FedEx Cup by failing to win or even truly challenge in a single one of Tim Finchem’s four marketing vision tournaments.

Now, I have an overriding fear that he’ll flame out against Bradley Dredge, let alone K.J. Choi. Come on Rory. It’s not like I’ve never done anything for you. Get to Tiger.

Speaking of brackets though, do we really need the possibility of seeing Tiger wipe out the increasingly-overrated (again) Mike Weir in the second round? Arron Oberholser needs to jettison the Canadian slug on day one. Sorry, moose lovers to the North, this isn’t a meaningless President’s Cup match.

Rememeber, for complete on-site coverage of the whole tournament, stay tuned to the front of WorldGolf.com and this blog starting Tuesday.

And yes, you’ll get plenty of Rory-Tiger buildup - as long as the dream’s alive.

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