Woods had no trouble picking the most important shot on wednesday

The first time since he first qualified for this World Golf Championship in 2005, the earth's No. 1 player was beaten in the first round. There is no such thing being an upset, not even for the No. 1 seed, given the 18-hole match and the quality of players.

Nevertheless, few saw this coming.

Simply a last year, Donald completed one of the most dominant performance ever inside Match Play Championship. He never trailed the complete ping rapture v2 irons week, and none of his matches ever reached the 18th hole.

Seems Donald will not be playing the 18th hole this week, either.

He never led against Ernie Els, and started dropping shots in bundles about the back nine until the time had come to eliminate his cap and shake hands on the 14th green.

Els won, 5 and 4, becoming merely the third No. 64 seed to win a match because event began in 1999. Peter O'Malley beat Woods in 2002 at La Costa, and Ross McGowan defeated Steve Stricker couple of years ago at Dove Mountain.

"I don't think it would have mattered who I played today. I recently didn't play well," Donald said. "I struggled. I gave away a lot of callaway ft-iz driver holes making a lot of mistakes. You can not accomplish that in match play against anyone, not to say Ernie."

Donald, coming off 12 months in which he took over as first player to capture the money title on the PGA Tour as well as the European Tour, has not finished on the list of top 30 within the three tournaments he's played this season. The final time that happened what food was in August 2009.

He headed home to south Florida for two main weeks discount golf clubs off ahead of the next WGC event at Doral.

"It's an awful ride home, trust me," said Els, who may have lost half a dozen times inside opening round. "I sense of Luke. He's got a lot of pressure on him. Yeah, I know exactly what it is like."