Golf: Goliath Falls But Angel Flies Towards Els Fire

Ernie Els clung precariously to a place in the HSBC World Match Play Championship yesterday when he squeezed out Angel Cabrera with the last putt of their match.

On a day which saw the departure of Vijay Singh, the world No1, beaten by the Ryder Cup captain Bernhard Langer, it was essential for the success of the tournament that Els, the world No2, survived into today's semi-finals, and he did so, just. He has now won 20 of his 24 matches in this event; only Severiano Ballesteros (27) and Gary Player (23) have won more.

Yesterday Els arrived at the 35th all square with Cabrera but with memories of his morning round when he hit two tee shots out of bounds. The Argentinian, with the honour, found the trees and Els, with what he called "a little cut shot", smashed the ball 305 yards down the middle. That put him one up and when Cabrera missed an eagle chip by inches at the 36th Els holed from nine feet for the win.

"That was tough," said the South African, "a see-saw battle."

Padraig Harrington spent the day arguing with trees and, as is the way of things, Wentworth's woods won. In his match with Thomas Levet the Irishman hooked into trouble at the 3rd and, in getting out, smashed his four-iron against a tree trunk. He had to send the club back to be reshafted but next time the damage was not so easy to repair. In attempting to recover from the woods at the 12th, the Irishman swung full tilt into a branch and skinned the thumb on the right hand. First aid was called for, a plaster applied and Harrington, who at one stage had been six up, lost the hole to be only one up.

"You should see the state of the tree," he said after hanging on to win by one hole. But he was in genuine pain. "I wasn't capable of hitting a full shot," he said. "I hit a series of pushes and prods just to get somewhere near the green and force Thomas to have to make birdies.

"I couldn't grip the club properly - it felt like I was holding a shovel - and at the 16th I tried to take the thumb off the club altogether, and hit it 100 yards out of bounds. I couldn't even put pressure on the thumb to tee the ball up or repair pitch marks and I could feel it at address, the top of the backswing and at impact.

"I'll just have to get some medical advice and see how it is in the morning. But there was no way I was going to give in."

Retief Goosen was clearly the man in form in the second half of the draw, having dismissed Jeff Maggert rather rudely in the first round by 12&11, a record margin for the 41-year-old championship. The South African was 10 under for the 25 holes of the match and the fact that he got off a long and demanding golf course so quickly and was able to rest while the others were all slogging away was a further point in his favour. But matchplay frequently ignores factors of this kind and Goosen was reminded of the vagaries of the format when he found himself three down at lunch.

Lee Westwood had gone round in 66, a good score considering it contained 29 putts, and the Englishman built on his lead by going eagle, birdie at the long 4th and short 5th in the afternoon.

Goosen played the next seven holes in three under but got only one hole back and, with Westwood four up with five to play, the South African needed some help from the Englishman just to stay in the match.

It looked like he might get it at the 14th, where Westwood's tee shot spun back off the green and he could only chip to 12 feet. But Goosen missed from 14 feet and Westwood holed, effectively for the win.

Langer was the first man ever to be officially the world's No1, after he won the US Masters in 1986. In Singh he met the latest in a long line of succession, with the German in the meantime having slipped to 86th.

"Our match reminded me of that old Bible story," said Langer, "when little David beat Goliath. That's how I felt. He was obviously the hot favourite but I am always tremendously motivated and 100% professional."

Singh, as befits a man who learned the game in places such as Fiji and the Borneo jungle, is not a fan of golf in the cold, or in that penetrating drizzle the Irish call "wetting rain" because it seeps through every pore. Langer, on the other hand, was brought up in Bavaria where, if you don't play in those conditions, you don't play. He was twice round in 69, which left Singh needing to birdie three of the last four holes just to get into a sudden-death play-off.

Once there David had just sufficient stones left to finish his man off, but it seemed as though he might be running out of ammunition against Miguel Angel Jiménez in the second round. Mind you, he would have needed more in the nature of a heat-seeking missile than a catapult to bring down the high-flying Spaniard.

The German played the solid golf he is famed for, had a run of three successive birdies from the 3rd, was four under after 12 - and four down. By that time Jiménez, winner of four tournaments this year, had eagled the 7th and 12th, birdied six other holes and was nine under par. The Spaniard was three up at half-time, and still three up after 28 holes.

First round

Ernie Els (SA) beat Scott Drummond (Scot) 2&1

Angel Cabrera (Arg) beat KJ Choi (Kor) 1 hole

Padraig Harrington (Ire) beat Chris Riley (US) 2&1

Lee Westwood (Eng) beat Todd Hamilton (US) 4&3

Thomas Levet (Fr) beat Mike Weir (Can) 2&1

Quarter-finals

Els beat Cabrera 1 hole

Harrington beat Levet 1 hole

Westwood beat Goosen 2&1

Jiménez three up on Langer after 28 holes