| Wentworth,
Surrey, 17th October 1998 -
Mark O'Meara inflicted a record-setting 11 and 10 defeat on defending champion
Vijay Singh on Saturday to reach the final of the World Matchplay championship
for the first time. The
41-year-old Masters and Open champion scorched to a six-hole lead through seven
holes in the morning, led by a record-equalling 10 holes at the 18-hole interval
and wrapped up the victory at the 26th hole. His
winning margin exceeded the previous best in the 35-year-old championship of 11
and 9 by Tom Watson over South African Dale Hayes in 1978. "I
made a lot of birdies and it was fun this morning. Vijay is a tremendous competitor
but he didn't make make many putts or many birdies. It was just one of those days
when everything went right for Mark O'Meara," the Florida resident said.
"It was
one of those days when I was definitely in a zone. A 63 with a double bogey was
more than I could wish for." In
Sunday's final, the fourth seed will meet the winner between world number one
Tiger Woods and Lee Westwood of Britain, in which Woods was three up with nine
holes to play. The
matches started 2-1/2 hours late because of heavy overnight rain which saturated
the course and there was a chance the Woods-Westwood match would not finish on
Saturday. In
that case, it will be completed on Sunday morning before the final. Singh
said the wet conditions hurt him. "I
couldn't judge the pitch shots. It was too wet to do anything out there,"
the tall Fijian said of the problem most of the quartet had judging how far the
balls would run after bouncing on the soggy greens. "It
was too wet to do anything out there. That and the fact that he was playing well
and I was trying too hard to catch up. "I
played decently and didn't hit too many bad shots but Mark played great. He made
a lot of big ones and when he's making it from outside you on the greens, if you
don't make it you go another one down, that's when you start forcing it."
O'Meara holed
from 35, 20, 12 and 10 feet during his morning round, which included a concession
on the 17th after Singh drove out of bounds. "I
gave him too many easy ones. I gave him five easy ones this morning,"Singh
said. "But 11 and 10, 11 and 9, are the same as one-up. That's the way it
goes." | 
