Garcia and Toms survive at World Match Play

Sergio Garcia and David Toms are the only seeds in the top 12 to survive at the World Match Play championship on Thursday after the second round at the La Costa Resort and Spa.

Five top seeds were defeated on the day as Ernie Els lost 1-up in a playoff to Tom Lehman, defending U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen lost 1-up to Jose Maria Olazabal, and Davis Love III fell to Paul Azinger 1-up.

Vijay Singh was another leading casualty going down 3-and-2 to Niclas Fasth and Chris DiMarco was a 2-and-1 loser to Mark Calcavecchia.

Wednesday's first round was the precursor of things to come when world number one Tiger Woods lost to Peter O'Malley, while Phil Mickelson and David Duval were also defeated.

In one of the day's closest matches, the fourth seed Garcia beat a young and game Charles Howell III 1-up.

Garcia went ahead early with birdies on the first two holes for a 2-up lead.

Howell would answer with a birdie of his own on the third hole, but would go bogey-birdie-bogey on the fifth through seventh holes.

After Howell made a birdie on the ninth, the match was back to 1-up for Garcia.

Both players would make mistakes on the back nine, but Howell would eventually catch Garcia on the 13th with a birdie and then again when Garcia missed a putt for par on the 15th.

But Howell bogeyed the 16th to go 1-down and he never recovered.

"To win these kinds of tournaments, you have to play well, but you have to be a little lucky," Garcia said.

"Because you can have one or two bad days, and if you have that day if you're playing with a guy who is playing a little worse than you, that's when it counts."

Garcia's next opponent is Scott McCarron, a 1-up winner over Canadian Mike Weir.

By his own admission, sixth seed Toms didn't play his best golf but made shots when he needed to advance.

"I guess you would call it a pillow fight," Toms said.

"Didn't look like either of us wanted to win...neither of us ever took control of the match. We never had more than 1-up lead either side.

I just have to go out and play well. I'm going to have to play better tomorrow than I did today to advance, and I know that."

His opponent in the third round will be left-hander Steve Flesch, a 3-and-2 winner over Kirk Triplett in his second-round match.

All told, 11 of the 16 matches were won by the lower seeds on Thursday.

Besides Garcia and Toms, only 14th-seeded Jim Furyk, Brad Faxon (47) and Nick Price (32) won their matches as the higher seed.

One of the bigger surprises of the second round was 63rd seeded John Cook, who defeated second seed Mickelson in the first round 3 and 2 and then beat Lee Westwood of England 1-up.

After his opening day success over Woods, O'Malley came back down to earth when he lost to Price 2 and 1.

FORM PLAYER

Olazabal is the form player in the field, he won two weeks ago down the road at Torrey Pines in the Buick Invitational and has continued his good play this week.

"Pretty much driving the ball has been the key. That has been the difference between the last couple of years and the start of the season," Olazabal said.

"Even though it's still not like it should be, but there has been some improvement and that allowed me to hit more fairways. And once you start hitting fairways, the game of golf is a little bit easier."

Olazabal has a match play record in this event of 6-2, the most victories of the remaining 16 players.