Would Luke Donald or Ian Poulter win a match play major?
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This week sees the WGC-Accenture Match Play take place in Arizona, as 64 of the world's best players compete over five days to crown one champion.
It's a tournament that should be more prestigious, more popular - after all, it consistently attracts a blockbuster field, and gives the viewer a golfing spectacle different to pretty much every other week of the year.
Given a better position in the calendar - i.e. later in the year, when the sport has a bit more buzz in the collective conscious - and a bit more history, it could really be a special tournament. Indeed, it's hard to shake the feeling it could be the tournament the US PGA Championship is crying out to be turned into.
The US PGA is the fourth major of the year - both on the calendar and in the public conscious. It's biggest claim to fame is that it generally attracts the greatest number of the world's top 100 to compete (a worthy boast), while also offering numerous berths to the club professionals of the United States (once worthy, back in the day, but now stinks somewhat of national discrimination - why can't club pros from around the world get similar benefits?).
It doesn't have the romance of the Masters, the history of the Open Championship or the character of a US Open. Ultimately, it has little to truly distinguish it.
It once did, of course - up until 1957 it was a match play tournament, much like this week's event in Arizona. After two rounds to decide the 128-man field (well, for the final two years at least), players competed in match play until the final stages, where 36-hole contests decided who progressed - and who ultimately won.
In 1958, however, the decision was taken to change to a strokeplay format, a format that continues to this day. But maybe that should change once more.
The closing stages of the tournament would be superbly dramatic if they followed the format of this week's WGC event - although perhaps the field for that portion of the tournament would be restricted to 32, with 18-hole matches for every stage from that point onward.
That 32-man field could be decided after a strokeplay section, perhaps three rounds that include two cuts - one down to 70 players after 36 holes (like the current major cuts) and then another round later to finalise the final 32 (which would have the added bonus, in most years, of requiring some sort of playoff between tied players - a television ratings goldmine).
The sheer volume of time needed to complete the number of rounds might be the problem, however - with at least five days needed to get a worthwhile tournament going without players succumbing to fatigue in the later stages. But if that is the case, and makes it impossible to incorporate into one week at the US PGA, then why not employ the format at the Olympics?
With host nations likely to build courses to hold the discipline at each Games (starting in Rio in 2016), it would make sense to get as much use as possible out of the bespoke 18 holes. A six or seven day tournament, perhaps held over two weeks to give players some respite, would be an interesting prospect.
Match play should be involved, however. As this week will no doubt remind us it is a part of the sport's future, not just its past.
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