T-Mobile Match Play promises to deliver as the last annual professional golf tournament left in Las Vegas

March Madness is coming to an end, but that’s no reason to fret.

There’s a bracket left to be filled out for those still jonesing for action. It’s just going to be played on pristine local links instead of hardwood floors across the country.

Golf—yes, golf—is the next sport in line to capitalize on fans’ fascination with single-elimination, head-to-head tournaments. The LPGA’s T-Mobile Match Play event commenced for the fifth consecutive year on April 2 at Shadow Creek Golf Course.

An ultra-exclusive field of 64 of the top women’s golfers in the world compete in a set of round-robin matches through April 4, when the top 16 emerge to form a bracket for the weekend. The ultimate victor will have to beat two opponents apiece April 4-5 in full 18-hole matches to earn the prestigious title.

It’s the lone remaining professional golf tournament left locally after Shriners Hospital for Children declined to renew its contract as sponsor for the annual fall PGA Tour event. For the first time since 1982, Las Vegas is not currently listed on the PGA Tour’s upcoming schedule.

That should be reason enough to embrace the T-Mobile Match Play tournament, but here are four more reasons to keep an eye on the bracket as it plays out over the weekend.

The format

Not only has Las Vegas vanished from the PGA Tour schedule, but so has any version of match play.

The WGC Match Play event was one of the most anticipated non-major tournaments for 25 years before the tour scrapped it in 2024. That’s in part due to men’s professional golf being in a state of flux as Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund continues to pluck away players from the PGA Tour for its rival LIV Golf.

It’s now contractually impossible to get the top 64 men’s players together for a single event outside of the four annual major tournaments.

That makes this tournament the sole time per year the best golfers in the world literally go one-on-one.

The best female players are still competing against each on a week-to-week basis, but it’s a different feel when they’re all spread amongst different playing groups in traditional stroke play tournaments. There’s an increased level of intensity when a pair of players alternate shots and have to immediately answer a momentum-shifter like a titanic drive or long putt.

Match play has captivated golf fans for decades, and this is the only place where they can now get their fill.

Major tune-up

The majority of viewers only care to tune in for the major tournaments spread across the golf calendar. There are five annual “majors” in women’s golf, and the first is right around the corner with the Chevron Championship beginning on April 24 in The Woodlands, Texas.

That makes T-Mobile Match Play a key event for the top contenders to hone their games and get into the best form possible ahead of the $7.9 million purse Chevron Championship.

Majors are much more riveting to watch with some idea of the storylines and which players are rising and falling. T-Mobile Match Play will go a long way in determining that context.

The defending-champion World No. 1

For proof of the correlation between the Chevron Championship and T-Mobile Match Play, look no further than last year, when Nelly Korda won both.

It was part of a historic stretch where the 26-year-old superstar from Bradenton, Florida won five straight tournaments she entered. Debates raged on who was the most dominant golfer in the world with Scottie Scheffler simultaneous to Korda putting together the best PGA Tour season since Tiger Woods was in his prime with seven victories.

Korda tailed off as the 2024 season went on with only two more wins to also reach seven trophies. But she’s created a gap between herself and everyone else in the Women’s World Golf Rankings that still stands.

She’s got a pair of second-place finishes and seventh-place in her three tournaments this year heading into T-Mobile Match Play.

Local rooting interest

For a while, it looked like local resident Danielle Kang was poised to become Korda’s biggest rival. The 32-year-old won back-to-back tournaments when the LPGA resumed following a pandemic pause in 2020—shortly before Korda claimed her first major, the 2021 Women’s PGA Championship—and reached the No. 2 ranking in the world.

Her career hasn’t gone smoothly in the years since then, but she still got into the T-Mobile Match Play by landing one of two sponsor exemptions. She’s vowed to come back stronger this season with mixed results, making the cut in two of four events.

Another LPGA mainstay who calls Las Vegas home, Jenny Shin, looks to be in better form with cuts made in two of three tournaments in 2025. Shin got an automatic invite to T-Mobile Match Play as a result of her No. 41 ranking in the world.

A local has yet to win T-Mobile Match Play, but with the high number of professionals who call Las Vegas home, it’s bound to happen at some point.

This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.