CARLSBAD, Calif. -- The way Nick Price sees it, he would merely have been "jumping out of the frying pan into the fire."

To be sure, had his good friend Ernie Els opted to travel to soggy Southern California from his home South Africa and play in the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship this week, Price wouldn't have been playing Tiger Woods in the first round.

And just who would have been his opponent, instead? None other than the world's No. 1, Vijay Singh. So either way, it's not a particularly enviable task.

"I don't have an awful lot to lose," Price admitted, with a wry smile.

But the personable South African, who was himself once atop the world rankings like Singh is and Woods was, has everything to gain on Thursday when the rain-delayed championship finally gets under way with its first 32 matches.

The 47-year-old Price finds himself enthused about the game for the first time in the last three years or so. And while he'd love to have played more than two competitive rounds this year, Price is primed for the considerable challenge.

Woods comes to La Costa this year playing extremely well, with a win already at the Buick Invitational. But the ebb and flow of 18 holes of match play can prove to be a great equalizer, along with the increasing parity already found in the global game.

"In all honesty, if you take the top six players now in the field, and you look, say, from seven or eight onwards, there's not a lot that separates those guys from the guys who are 50th," Price said.

Since the first Accenture Match Play Championship was played in 1999, there have been 384 matches contested -- with 173, or 45 percent, won by the lower-seeded player. Historically, the so-called underdogs have done best in the second round, winning 54 percent of the time.

Even with his stellar match play record that includes three straight U.S. Junior titles followed by three straight U.S. Amateurs, Woods is not immune. He was one of the top three seeds to fall -- tripped up by No. 64 Peter O'Malley -- in the first round of the 2002 Accenture Match Play Championship.

"I have played matches where I've beat my opponent, and there are matches where I stole one," Woods admitted. "Last year with John Rollins in the first round, I shouldn't have been going on. He outplayed me, but I happened to sneak a couple of holes in the end and sneak out the match.

"Sometimes, that's what it takes. Sometimes you need to have someone make a mistake and give you a match because you're not going to play well every single match. I certainly haven't."

Woods has played well enough, though, to reach the finals of the Accenture Match Play Championship three times and win it each of the last two years. Price, on the other hand, has never advanced past the third round and was booted out on the first day last year by Colin Montgomerie.