HSBC World Match Play Championship
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The World Match Play Championship is the current name of a match play golf tournament played annually at Wentworth Club near London. In 2007 it is reverting to its traditional month of October after being played in September for a few years. Previous sponsors have included Piccadilly, Suntory, Toyota, Cisco and HSBC.
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[edit] History
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 ranked in the top two in the Official World Golf Ranking or its predecessor Mark McCormack's world golf rankings.
The event consists of 36-hole matches played in a single day. For many years it was a twelve man event, with four seeded players being given a bye 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 stroke play 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 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 64-man WGC-Accenture Match Play 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.
[edit] The current Championship
In 2003, the tournament was given a major overhaul. Greatly increased sponsorship was secured from the largest British based bank, HSBC, and the winner's prize was increased to £1 million, which was then easily the largest in world golf (although the Nedbank Golf Challenge had had a $2 million first prize from 2000-02). In 2004, the field was increased to sixteen players, all of whom need to play eight rounds of golf to win, to eliminate the advantage previously given to seeds. A qualifying system based primarily on performances in the four majors, replaced the invitations of the past. World ranking points were allocated to the event (for the first time since 1999[1]), and championship became an official money European Tour Order of Merit event - not however the actual prize money, as the first prize is far higher than for the other events on the tour, but scaled down amounts intended to be more proportionate. In recent years Americans have tended to decline their invitations. In 2005, no Americans took part at all, and with stalwart Ernie Els injured and Vijay Singh and Sergio García also absent, the field was one of the weakest seen at the event, with just one player from the world top ten. The 2006 event had a considerably stronger field with six of the world's top ten players headed by the world's top two ranked players Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk. But in January 2007 HSBC activated a break clause in its ten year contract and will withdraw from sponsorship after the 2007 event, leaving the future of the tournament in doubt.[2]
[edit] Winners
[edit] Multiple winners
Through the 2007 event, the following players have won the World Match Play Championship more than once:
- 7 times: Ernie Els
- 5 times: Seve Ballesteros and Gary Player
- 3 times: Greg Norman and Ian Woosnam
- 2 times: Nick Faldo, Hale Irwin and Arnold Palmer
[edit] Qualification criteria
This is the current qualification system. The largest category is criteria 3, which is based on the major championships, but criteria 4 and 5 give favourable treatment to members of the European Tour.
1. The defending champion.
2. The World Number One on the Official World Golf Ranking as at March 31 in the year of the Championship.
3. The leading ten available players, not qualified under criteria 1 or 2, from the HSBC Major Championship Rankings as at the conclusion of the PGA Championship. These rankings reflect the actual World Ranking points earned in the four majors.
4. The leading two available European Tour Members from the HSBC European Tournament Rankings, not qualified under criteria 1, 2 or 3. These rankings reflect the actual World Ranking points earned by European Tour Members in the following seven events:
- HSBC Champions
- Dubai Desert Classic
- Johnnie Walker Classic
- BMW PGA Championship
- BMW International Open
- French Open
- Smurfit European Open
5. The leading two available European Tour members, not qualified under criteria 1, 2, 3 or 4, from the European Tour Order of Merit, as of three weeks before the Championship.
The defending champion is seeded #1, while the rest of the seeds are determined by the Official World Golf Ranking.
[edit] Media coverage
The World Match Play currently gets shown live by BBC and it also gets broadcast in Ireland by Setanta Ireland.
[edit] References
- ^ World Rankings are refined, but still confusing
- ^ Don't Bank on HSBC, sportbusiness.com, 31 January 2007.
