ANTHONY KIM, the flash and talented Californian, will contest today’s final of the new model World Match Play championship against the solid and unflappable Ross Fisher of England. In yesterday’s semi-finals, Kim accounted for Robert Allenby 5 & 4, while Fisher beat Angel Cabrera, the Masters champion, on the 39th hole.

After 43 years in leafy Surrey, the championship was not staged in 2008 and it has now been taken to the Finca Cortesin club near Estepona on the Costa del Sol, with a round-robin format to determine the semi-finalists. The Andalucian sun shone as brightly as ever and the new format was a success, but one could not help but lament the autumn glories of Wentworth.

But at least there was one stirring semi-final, a good-natured and strenuous contest between Fisher and Cabrera which featured several turns of advantage, some huge hitting from the tee and some dubious putting.

Fisher seemed to have done enough to reach the final when he arrived at the 36th hole one up and hit the better drive, but Cabrera hit a wonder shot, blind from the rough with a five wood, finding the narrow entrance to the green from almost 250 yards away. Fisher laid up to the par-five hole, which proved too cautious, and lost it.

The extra holes consisted of replays of the 18th, with buggy rides back to the tee as the sun went down. First time up, they halved it in pars, the second time in birdies and finally Fisher won on the 39th when Cabrera mishit his chip and held out his hand to concede the match.

Kim’s semi-final against Robert Allenby was billed and played as a grudge match, with scarcely a word exchanged over two rounds and hardly a putt being given.

The bad feeling came about when Kim easily beat Allenby in a singles match at the President’s Cup, after which the Australian accused Kim of going out on the town the night before, returning to team quarters at four in the morning, walking sideways. Kim, inset, did not deny the charge and didn’t need to: if that was his preparation, it worked.

This time, Allenby was the architect of his own destruction. After a tight and frosty 18 holes in the morning, which finished all square, he fluffed a chip on the seventh, the ball barely moving. It was the kind of shot that makes a man want to dive head first into the nearest bunker. It also put Kim two up. Worse still, Allenby fluffed another chip on the eighth, which allowed Kim to halve the hole despite a wild drive and having to take a drop from an unplayable lie.

Kim hit the shot of the match to the ninth green, a full sand wedge from some 90 yards which pitched five yards short of the hole, skipped six feet beyond it and then, as the backspin took effect, screwed back into the hole for an eagle two. Allenby’s goose was cooked and basted.