IT used to be one of the most exciting and unpredictable days of golf of the year, the kind of day where play could be disrupted by snow in the middle of the desert and Peter O'Malley became the answer to a future pub quiz question by beating Tiger Woods.
But when the WGC-Cadillac Match Play gets under way next Wednesday, as well as there being no sign of Woods, there will be no players making early exits and heading for the airport with their tail between their legs.
That is because a new format was chosen for the event, with the 64-man field divided into 16 groups of four instead of the traditional straight knockout.
Group matches will be played on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the winner of each group advances to the last 16 on Saturday morning, with the quarter-finals on Saturday afternoon. The semi-finals will be held on Sunday morning with the final and consolation match later the same day.
The top seed for each group will be one of the top 16 players in the world rankings with the remaining group members drawn from three pools on Monday. Pool one features players ranked 17th to 32nd, pool two has players 33rd to 48th and pool three those ranked 49th to 64th.
So top seed and four-time major winner Rory McIlroy could still suffer a shock defeat to world number 64 Ben Martin, but then be able to win his next two matches to reach the last 16.
It does not exactly make for edge-of-your-seat tension, but it is easy to see why tournament sponsors and television companies are in favour.
For them the nightmare scenario is the one which played out in 2013, when Woods and McIlroy lost in the first round to Charles Howell and Shane Lowry respectively. Or in 2002 when top seeds Woods and Mickelson lost to O'Malley and John Cook respectively.
With an eight-hour time difference to San Francisco to deal with, it remains to be seen how many viewers in Europe will be watching anyway, but at least the tournament still exists after major doubts that would be the case when Accenture did not renew their sponsorship.
In a schedule awash with identikit 72-hole strokeplay events, a match play tournament with a poor format is better than nothing at all.
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