World Golf Championships

This past weekend Patrick Reed won the WGC – Cadillac Championship.  This is the third of four WGC events in this year’s “wrap around” season.

This week let’s review …what are these World Golf Events?

History

In 1996 professional golf’s five ruling bodies – the PGA Tour, the European Tour, the Japan Golf Tour, the PGA Tour of Australasia and the South African Tour (formerly known as The Sunshine Tour) formed the International Federation of PGA Tours.  Their primary purpose was to launch a new set of tournaments that would truly be global.  The Asian Tour joined the Federation in 1999.   The first World Golf Championships were played in 1999.

The idea was to have championships comprised of the very best global players.  Each championship has its own way of identifying the field and, typically, the field size is much, much smaller than regular PGA Tour events.  The field consists of the top money winners from the previous year on the various tours and the top players in the World Golf Ranking.  Here is a side by side comparison of WGC Events with the other events on Tour:

Field Size                    Purse                         Friday Cut       Fed Ex Points

Open events               144 -156     $  5MM to $ 7 MM             Low 70             500

Invitational events     100 -120       $  6.2MM to $ 6.4MM         Low 70             500

WGC                           64 – 75       $  8.5MM to $ 9MM            No cut              550

Masters                       90-100        $  8MM                              Low 50              600

Players                        145             $ 10MM                              Low 70             600

US Open                     144             $  8MM                               Low 60             600

British Open               156              $  8MM                               Low 80             600

PGA Championship  158                $ 10MM                              Low 70             600

Playoff # 1                   120              $  8MM                               Low 70            2500

Playoff # 2                   100              $  8MM                               Low 70            2500

Playoff # 3                   70                $  8MM                                No cut             2500

Tour Championship    30                $  8MM                                No cut             2500

Today there are four WGC events.  The first one in this new wrap around season is the WGC – HSBC Champions in Shanghai in the fall.  It was not originally an official WGC event but has been since 2009.  The other three original WGC events are the Accenture Match Play in February, WGC Cadillac Championship in March and The WGC Bridgestone Championship in August.

An interesting note …

The HP Byron Nelson Championship has a $ 6.900,000 purse.  It is among the highest purses of any event on the PGA Tour.  Other than the major championships, the WGC events and the play-off events there are 32 other events on the PGA Tour.  The HP Byron Nelson Championship has the second highest purse of those other 32 events.

Tim Gamso
Member
Salesmanship Club of Dallas