Colin Montgomerie has to take on record six-time winner Ernie Els in the opening round of the HSBC World Match Play Championship at Wentworth on Thursday.

Montgomerie, champion himself in 1999 and twice a runner-up, has fallen to 48th in the new world rankings and as such will be seeded 15th of the 16 players chasing the £1million first prize.

Els is the highest-ranked player on show - he is currently fifth - but because defending champion Paul Casey is automatically the top seed the South African finds himself at the other end of the draw and therefore up against the man he twice pushed into second place at the US Open.

One of Montgomerie's two final defeats, in 1994, was to Els, who has also beaten Steve Elkington, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia, Thomas Bjorn and Lee Westwood to lift the trophy.

Casey starts against American Jerry Kelly, the only player in the field not in the world's top 50, while Open champion Padraig Harrington, seeded third, takes on Anders Hansen, the Dane who won the BMW PGA Championship over the same West Course in May.

Justin Rose, runner-up to Nick Dougherty in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews at the weekend and also to Hansen after a play-off five months ago, faces up-and-coming American Hunter Mahan.

All but one of the eight first-round clashes features at least one European. Swedes Henrik Stenson and Niclas Fasth goes head to head with American Woody Austin, the one who fell into the lake during the recent Presidents Cup, and Argentina's Andres Romero respectively.