Backspin: Breaking down brackets, swing changes

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Aaron Baddeley provided some pretty good insight into another player undergoing a swing change right now, but first I want to get into the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship because there's almost nothing more fun in golf than filling out brackets.

With that in mind, here's a look at the five players with the most momentum heading into this week's 64-player field at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Tucson, Ariz.

Bill Haas: As you'll see in Stock Up, Haas is hitting the ball better than he ever has at any point in his career and it has shown in the results with four finishes in the top 12 in five starts. Haas also likes playing in the desert and is 11th in birdie average and 16th in scoring average on the PGA TOUR. He's also hitting a lot of greens -- fifth on TOUR -- and will need to hit them in the right spots on some of the trickiest greens players will see all year.

Martin Kaymer: He isn't the top-ranked player in the world, but he's sure playing like it with five wins in the last 12 months, including a victory in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago. The biggest concern with Kaymer is that this is his first tournament of the year in the U.S., and I'd hardly call that a concern given how he's playing right now. He could probably win on the moon if he had to.

Hunter Mahan: He's coming off a so-so week at Riviera, where he failed to break 70 and finished in a tie for 55th. But Mahan has also contended twice this year, in San Diego and at Pebble Beach. Now, Mahan is just 2-3 in this event but he's clearly grown since last year's Ryder Cup. The biggest worry for Mahan? The greens at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. He tends to be hot or cold with the putter and if he's the latter it could be a short week. That said, he's shown a lot of guts throughout his career.

Geoff Ogilvy: It's been a so-so year for Ogilvy, who got hurt in his first start of the year, missed the cut in his third and sandwiched in a tie for 21st and tie for 13th around it. But he's also won this event twice and finished second in 2007. You'd be hard-pressed to find a bracket without Ogilvy penciled in for the final four.

Rory McIlroy: Two starts, two top-10s, both in Europe but against good fields in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where he finished second. Like Kaymer, this will also be McIlroy's first start in the U.S. But like Mahan, he's grown exponentially since last year's Ryder Cup. I wouldn't be surprised to see McIlroy make it to the final eight.

Stock up

Vijay Singh: Two top-three finishes in his last three starts -- that's more than Singh had the last two years combined. The reason for the turnaround? Aside from being healthy, Singh did a lot of work on his short game and it's showing with the way he's been scrambling -- he was second in the field in putting last week despite hitting just under 60 percent of his greens. Bill Haas: One bad round -- a second-round 74 -- kept Haas from contending, but he still finished in a tie for 12th in L.A. The gas tank is probably a little low after four straight weeks but Haas has been good all year and one reason why is that he's hitting it better than he ever has at any point in his career. He's also making more putts. J.J. Henry: A final-round 66 gave Henry his first top-10 of the year -- he tied for ninth -- and it's also the second time in as many weeks that he's recorded a 66. A final-round 74 at Pebble Beach cost him another top-10, but Henry is trending upward. He's never done very well on the Florida swing, though, so if he were on my fantasy team I might think of holding off until the TOUR hits Texas.

Stock down

Angel Cabrera: Since his Masters victory in 2009, Cabrera has just four top-10s on TOUR, and he's struggled this year with just three rounds in the 60s. He missed the cut at Riviera and his best finish was a tie for 49th in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago after a final-round 72. Mike Weir: You have to give Weir credit for playing through injury, but it's obviously been a rough year for the Canadian, who had a couple of double hockey sticks rounds (two 77s) at Riviera to miss his third cut in four starts. The one cut he did make? He tied for, what else, 77th. He has just one sub-70 70 this season and doesn't look like he's going to meet his number for his Major Medical Exemption. Jim Furyk: Maybe his final-round 67 at Riviera will spark something in his game, but it hasn't exactly been a rousing start to the year for the defending FedExCup champion, who has two missed cuts and a tie for 35th in his last three starts. That 67, by the way, was Furyk's first sub-70 round since a second-round 68 at the season-opening Hyundai Tournament of Champions.

THE BACK NINE: 9 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. Whether or not Tiger Woods' swing has finally clicked, as John Cook suggested last week, we won't know until later this week at Dove Mountain, or maybe by the Masters, but Aaron Baddeley's victory Sunday at Riviera provided some pretty good insight into what it's like to undergo major swing changes. Early in his career, Baddeley had switched to the "stack-and-tilt" swing. Eventually, he struggled because he could only hit the ball one way. So in 2009, he went back to Dale Lynch, who he'd worked with growing up in Australia, on getting back to a more natural swing that would allow him to shape the ball. Fast forward a couple of years, and Baddeley, who had last won in 2007, finally ended the drought.

2. Those changes obviously took a while to take hold for Baddeley, who said, "After you'd make the progress, go out on the course, play a tournament, something would pop up and you'd have to fix that. So just step by step, we just sort of put the pieces together, built the foundation, and it was great, like the product today was just being able to hit the shots really that I needed to hit." So, there you have it.

3. Obviously Fred Couples' caddie, Joe LaCava, is a little biased, but he made an excellent point, telling ESPN.com, "I thought he had as good a chance as anybody coming into today. He's just as good as those guys. Age is a factor, sure. But not to the point where he can't play. He's in good shape and hits it just as far or farther than these guys. And he's got experience." In other words, guys like Couples, much like, say, Corey Pavin in Hartford, can still compete on the right golf course.

4. As healthy as Vijay Singh has been and as good as his short game has been this year, the biggest factor for the Fijian might be that he's got his confidence back. "I haven't had this feel for a long time, but it's really good," Singh said. "I'm feeling good, and I think I've still got it." Singh is one of those guys who needs validation to keep his confidence up and he's got plenty of both right now.

5. Golf is the ultimate individual sport. As NBA Hall-of-Famer and Northern Trust Open executive director Jerry West told me in an interview last week, you can't blame fans, coaches or teammates. It's all on you. So even if Dustin Johnson leaves finding out his tee time to his caddie, Bobby Brown, as Johnson told the Associated Press, ultimately the responsibility falls on Johnson.

6. Johnson avoided being disqualified by making it to his tee time with about 10 seconds to spare. One person who didn't avoid a DQ was Chris DiMarco, who signed for a second-round 75 even though he'd shot 77. I'm not sure I've ever heard of a player being two strokes off in that situation. "The reason I signed a wrong scorecard was because I had just missed the cut and just signed my card without checking it. I was frustrated," DiMarco said via Twitter. "No excuses. My fault."

7. In case you were wondering, Kevin Na is actually eligible to play on the U.S. Presidents Cup team. Here's why: Na, who is Korean, didn't start playing golf until he was 8 years old and after he'd already been living in the U.S. for a year. He's never represented Korea in international competition and his mother is a U.S. citizen. With his third-place finish at Riviera, Na moved from 26th to 16th in the Presidents Cup standings.

8. If there's a better player to be chairman of the Player Advisory Council than Jim Furyk, who was named to the position last week, I don't know who it is. Furyk is one of the smartest and most insightful and thorough guys on TOUR.

9. After catching bits and pieces of NBA All-Star weekend, I continue to wish there was an equivalent in golf. How fun would it be, say, in mid-season to see the game's best tee it up in some sort of all-star weekend that was complete with a long drive competition, short-game contest and so on.

Forward Spin

Comparing the World Golf Championship-Accenture Match Play Championship to the NCAA men's basketball tournament isn't exactly fair, mostly because the 64th best player in the world is a lot closer to the best player than the 64th best team is in basketball. Still, there's nothing like filling out brackets (click here to download yours), especially with all the potential "upsets" looming. I mean would anyone be stunned if Henrik Stenson beat Lee Westwood? My two favorite first-round matches: Ian Poulter vs. Stewart Cink in the Ben Hogan bracket and Bubba Watson vs. Bill Haas in the Sam Snead bracket. For those who didn't qualify for the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, there is the Mayakoba Golf Classic at Riviera Maya-Cancun. Not exactly a bad destination, and this year, Mexico's most successful and decorated golfer, Lorena Ochoa, will play in the Wednesday pro-am. Last year, Cameron Beckman rallied from three back with a final-round 67 to win for the third time in his career.

Next Kodak Challenge hole

TOURNAMENT: The Honda Classic HOLE: The par-4, 434-yard 16th at PGA National Champion course ABOUT THE HOLE: This dogleg right is the toughest par 4 of all of PGA National's 90 holes. Off the tee, everything slopes toward the water on the right, but a bunker was added to catch balls that roll too far right. Those who bail out left are faced with a 220-yard second shot over water, into the wind. Kodak Challenge standings