Volvo World Match Play Championship

The HSBC World Match Play Championship is the current sponsored name of a matchplay golf tournament played each September at Wentworth Club near London.

The tournament was founded by Mark McCormack as a showcase for the players he managed. The inaugural event in 1964 was won by Arnold Palmer, who was McCormack's first client. The calibre of the winners has consistently been very high, with the majority of the tournaments being won by players who have been official world number 1 (or before the introduction of the Official World Golf Rankings, unofficial world number 1) at some point in their career.

The event consists of thirty six hole matches played in a single day. For many years it was a twelve man event, with eight seeded players being given a by in the first round. It was sometimes felt that this was unfair, as an unseeded player needed to string together eight successful rounds in four days to win, twice as many as in a strokeplay tournament, whereas a seeded player only needed six successful rounds to win.

For its first forty years the tournament was an unofficial one, highly regarded by golf fans in Britain and many other countries outside the United States, popular with players, and happily coexisting with the PGA European Tour, at whose home course it is played, but not taken into account on an official tour money list, and offering no World Ranking Points. The introduction in 1999 of the sixty four man WGC-Accenture World Matchplay Championship, which selected its field on the basis of the World Rankings, was a blow to the prestige of the older event, whose exhibitional aspects, with a small invited field were emphasised by contrast.

In 2003 the tournament was given a major overhaul. Greatly increased sponsorship was secured from the largest British based bank, HSBC, and the winners prize was increased to £1 million, which was then easily the largest in world golf (althought the Nedbank Golf Challenge had had a $2 million first prize from 2000-02). The field was increased to sixteen men, all of whom need to play eight rounds to win, to eliminate the advantage previously given to seeds. A qualifying system based on performances in the four majors, with special invitations for the world number 1 ranked golfer and the defending champion if they do not otherwise qualify, replaced the invitations of the past. World Ranking points were allocated to the event, and the results were counted in the PGA European Tour money list - not however the actual prize money, which far higher than for the other events on the tour, but scaled down amounts intended to be more proportionate. This overhaul is considered to be a great success in every respect except one: some of the top Americans still declined their invitations.

Winners

External link

HSBC World Matchplay Championship Official site