America has dominated the inaugural Andersen Consulting Matchplay Championship by producing today's four semi-finalists from the original field of the world's top 64 players. But world number one Tiger Woods was not among them as he crashed out to compatriot Jeff Maggert. Woods, the hot favourite for the title, was beaten 2 and 1 by Maggert, who had trailed by two holes after the first three holes in the match.
Maggert was joined by the hardly household names of Andrew Magee, Steve Pate and John Huston in the semi-finals as the latter three accounted for Shigeki Maruyama, Eduardo Romero and Jose-Maria Olazabal respectively.
Huston, having come from three down with five to play to beat Swede Patrik Sjoland on the last in the third round earlier in the day, ended European interest when he defeated Olazabal 2 and 1.
Pate, ranked 61st of the field, knocked out Argentina's Eduardo Romero 3 and 2, while Magee (50th), whose earlier victims included Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjorn, ended the run of the popular Japanese Maruyama on the 18th.
Woods was sailing smoothly on as he won the first with a par four and the third with a birdie two, but 1997 Ryder Cup team-mate Maggert birdied the eighth, 10th and 12th to turn the match around and added a 12-foot putt for yet another winning birdie three holes later.
The 569-yard 17th offered Woods hope, but he pulled his drive into the rough and angrily slammed the ground with his club.
His second was still in the lefthand rough, but by pitching to 15 feet he still had a chance. The birdie putt slipped by, though.
Maggert, with just one victory and 12 runners-up finishes to his name on the US Tour, thus joined a list of people who have beaten Woods in matchplay which will be a quiz question in years to come.
English amateurs Paul Page and Gary Wolstenholme (the former at the 1993 US Amateur, the latter in the 1995 Walker Cup), Costantino Rocca (1997 Ryder Cup) and Mark O'Meara (1998 World Matchplay final at Wentworth) is the cumulative answer.
Santiago Luna can claim a spot as well since he triumphed under the medal matchplay format of the Alfred Dunhill Cup at St Andrews last October.
Olazabal was three down after four, got the gap back to one by the eighth, but then was hit by two more Huston birdies.
When he holed from 10 feet to win the 14th he was two down with four to play and remembered that before lunch he had been two down with five to go against 1996 US Open champion Steve Jones and won on the last after playing a brilliant pitch-and-run to three feet.
There was to be no repeat, however. He could have taken the match down the last again by holing from seven feet at the 17th, but the putt lipped out.
The Spaniard had been left to carry European hopes on his shoulders after the morning defeats of not only Sjoland, but also Bernhard Langer to Maggert.
Sjoland had come from three down with seven to play to beat Paraguay's Carlos Franco in the second round - he played the stretch in a brilliant four under par and hit his second shot to the last to a foot - but the reverse happened against Huston.
The American birdied the short 14th, Sjoland bogeyed the next and with birdies on the next two Huston turned the game on its head.
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