The 64-man field for next week’s WGC-Dell Match Play has been released.
Only two eligible players – No. 10 Justin Thomas and No. 32 Justin Rose – are skipping the action at Austin Country Club in what will be the final match-play event on the PGA Tour schedule for the foreseeable future.
Thomas, who has made it out of group play just once in five tries, said at last week's Players Championship that he opted to play this week's Valspar Championship before taking two weeks off leading into the Masters.
"It's a place I love," Thomas said of Innisbrook, which hosts the Valspar. "I really, really love the golf course. I just I feel like I have a really good chance to win there if I go play. I just, I simply don't feel that way about Austin Country Club. It's nothing against the course; I've just, I've played it six times and I've played it really bad five of them. So, I just felt like it was a better decision for me to go to a place where I at least had some positivity and felt like I had a lot better chance to win than going to an elevated event, a huge event, being the Match Play, but knowing that I've had no success except for kind of – I would hate to call it a fluke year, but one year. And I didn't really want to take three weeks off before the Masters."
Justin Suh, at No. 77 in the Official World Golf Ranking, is currently the last man in the field.
Eleven LIV members are ranked inside the top 75 in the world but are suspended by the PGA Tour and thus unable to compete in Tour events.
The 16 four-man groups for the three-day, round-robin stage will be determined on Monday.