| Tournament information | |
|---|---|
| Location | Andalusia, Spain |
| Established | 1964 |
| Course(s) | Finca Cortesín Golf Club |
| Par | 72 |
| Length | 7,380 yards (6,750 m) |
| Tour(s) | European Tour |
| Format | Match play |
| Prize fund | €3,400,000 |
| Month played | May |
| Tournament record score | |
| Score | 10 & 8 Paul Casey (2006) |
| Current champion | |
| Ian Poulter | |
The Volvo World Match Play Championship is the current name of an annual match play men's professional golf tournament. From 2009 the event has been played at the Finca Cortesín Golf Club in Casares near Málaga, Spain, having previously been played at Wentworth Club near London. The event is traditionally played in the autumn, usually in October but sometimes in September, and is an official money event on the European Tour. Previous sponsors have included Piccadilly, Suntory, Toyota, Cisco and HSBC.
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The tournament was founded by sports agent, 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.
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 the 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 withdrew from sponsorship after the 2007 event.[2]
After HSBC withdrew its sponsorship in 2007, the tournament was given another major overhaul. After a break in 2008, the tournament returned in 2009 with Volvo as the new title sponsor.[3] The event moved from Wentworth to the Finca Cortesín Golf Club near Málaga in Spain. The format switched to an opening round robin, with 16 players divided into four groups and the winners advancing to the 36-hole semi-finals. The qualifying criteria were also changed to include certain players based on their nationality. The total prize money for 2009 was €3,250,000, with €750,000 of that going to the winner.
After another break in 2010, the tournament returned in May 2011, several months earlier than the traditional date in autumn. The field was expanded to 24 players, split into eight groups, playing in a round robin format. The top two players from each group would progress to the knockout stage. Unlike previous years, all matches would be played over 18 holes. The total prize money for 2011 was €3,400,000, with €800,000 of that going to the winner.
Through the 2011 event, the following players have won the World Match Play Championship more than once:
For the 2011 championship, the qualification criteria are as follows:
The World Match Play currently gets shown live by Sky Sports and it also gets broadcast in Ireland by Setanta Ireland.