Davis Love was everybody’s odds-on favorite in the final match of the 2006 Match Play Championship at La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA this past weekend. Everybody’s but Geoff Ogilvy, who beat him to win this WGC event that pits the world’s top 64 players against each other. Ogilvy must have felt positively calm during the 36-hole final against Love. He’d survived 10 (yes, TEN!) putts in previous matches that, had his opponents made them, would have sent him home. That stat alone should have been the only harbinger of Love’s doom that serious golf fans needed. Karma was heavily on Ogilvy’s side.

The 28 year-old Ogilvy joins only one other Australian golfer (Craig Parry) to win a World Golf Championship. The $1.3 million paycheck vaulted him to no. 30 in the world golf rankings. Love more or less self-destructed on the second 18 holes. He had a chance early in the day to put Ogilvy away, but he missed all 7 birdie putts on the first 10 holes that would have given him a commanding lead. In match play, you have to go for the throat early. As happens so often in golf, Love’s putter didn’t come through and it let his opponent hang around until the tables got turned.