AS MUCH by accident as design, the field for the WGC-CA Championship at Doral in Florida this week has come together with jigsaw perfection as all 80 eligible players will tee up over the Blue Monster course; among them Tiger Woods, playing his first strokeplay tournament since his eight-month lay-off, and Pádraig Harrington, who belatedly added the event to his schedule in attempting to play his way out of a poor run of form.

In fact, this €6.7 million ($8.5 million) tournament – the second WGC of the season, with Australian Geoff Ogilvy bidding to defend the title and add to the Accenture matchplay he took a fortnight ago – ticks all the boxes in terms of the field assembled, with all of the world’s top 50 players in action, and at least Harrington can tee up knowing there is no cut to worry about.

Harrington has missed the cut in his last two strokeplay events (in the Los Angeles Open and the Pebble Beach pro-am) and only decided to add this tournament to his schedule after a first-round exit at the hands of Pat Perez in the matchplay in Tucson. Still, he has history over the Blue Monster, having finished tied-17th there in the CA championship two years ago. He didn’t play in the event last year.

Of the other three Irish players in the field – Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke – McDowell is the only one to have previously played the Blue Monster. He finished tied-48th last year, albeit fighting the effects of jetlag as he only earned a last-gasp place in the field with his win in the Ballantines championship in Korea the previous week.

This time around, it is Korean YE Yang who has gate-crashed the CA party. Yang’s maiden tour win in the Honda Classic moved him up 313 places to 147th in the latest world rankings and earned a place in the field by moving into the top-10 on the US Tour’s FedEx Cup rankings and he has also claimed an invite to the US Masters in Augusta next month as a tournament winner.

John Rollins, runner up to Yang, and Davis Love also earned last-gasp invites to Doral after moving into the world’s top-50.

Yet, the fact of the matter is that the US Tour’s newest champion will have to step back into the shadows this week as Tiger-mania again gets set to fall on Doral. The world’s number one is returning to an old stomping ground, having won no fewer than three times in six appearances on the Blue Monster course.

Indeed, when the CA Championship (previously the American Express) moved permanently to Doral two years ago, Woods remarked at the time, “I love this golf course. I’ve always played well here, and when it was decided that we were going to come here, I just thought that this was a wonderful opportunity for me to win the championship.”

Woods won the old Ford Championship when it was staged at Doral in 2005 and 2006 and he won the CA championship in 2007, but had to settle for a fifth-place finish behind Ogilvy a year ago. That loss to Ogilvy ended a streak of six successive tournament wins – five on the US Tour and the Dubai Desert Classic on the European Tour – for Woods.

Although he only returned to competition at last month’s Accenture Matchplay, Woods has been installed as tournament favourite with the bookies. For good reason, perhaps. Apart from a 50 per cent winning strike rate on his previous tournament outings on the Blue Monster, Woods – with three wins, a runner-up finish, a fifth and a ninth – has also dominated the WGCs since their inception. In 27 starts, he has won 15 times, recorded 24 top-10 finishes and earned nearly $20 million (€15.8 million) in prize money.

In contrast, this will be a debut appearance in the CA Championship for McIlroy, who remains 16th in the latest world rankings. McIlroy’s tied-13th finish at the Honda Classic on the back of his quarter-final appearance at the Accenture has confirmed observations that his game is tailor-made for US courses and he will take a short break from tournament play after Doral before building up for a debut appearance in the Masters.

Clarke, meanwhile, still has a lot of work to do if he is to get an invite to Augusta. The Ulsterman slipped down one place to 76th in the latest world rankings and needs to break into the top-50 a week before the Masters if he is to get there.

However, he is the sort of ball striker who could do well on the Blue Monster.