The WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play is a match play knockout professional golf event which is one of the four annual World Golf Championships. The tournament is the only of the four WGC events to not be played as a stroke play event. From its 1999 founding until 2014, the tournament was held in late February. Beginning in 2015, the tournament was moved to the first weekend in May. In 2016, the event moved to Austin, Texas and was held during the last week of March. The tournament was originally sponsored by Anderson Consulting/Accenture, and in the years since, it has also been sponsored by Cadillac and Dell.
Video WGC Match Play
Format
The field consists of the top 64 players available from the Official World Golf Ranking, seeded according to the rankings. The purse for 2016 was $9.5 million, with a winner's share of $1.62 million and the Walter Hagen Cup. Prize money is official on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Japan Golf Tour.
From 1999 through 2014, it was a single-elimination event. Since 2011, all matches have been over 18 holes, with extra holes if necessary. Previously, the final match was played over 36 holes. The losers of the semi-final matches play an 18-hole consolation match for third place. The format was a five-day, six-match tournament starting on Wednesday. For the first four days (Wednesday through Saturday) a single round of matches were played, with the semi-finals, third-place match and final played on Sunday. When the final was 36 holes, the quarter-finals and semi-finals were both played on Saturday.
Beginning in 2015, the championship starts with pool play, with 16 groups of four players playing round-robin matches, Wednesday through Friday. The winners of each group advance to a single-elimination bracket on the weekend, with the round of 16 and quarterfinals on Saturday, including live prime-time quarterfinals coverage on network television, and the semi-finals, finals, and consolation match on Sunday, with the finals reaching again into prime-time network television.
Weather conditions caused schedule changes in 2005, 2011, and 2013. The start was delayed by a day in 2005, and the second and third rounds were played on the following day. In 2011, with the danger of bad weather on Sunday, the quarter-finals and semi-finals were both played on Saturday. Snow in 2013 delayed completion of the first round until Friday morning; the second round was played on Friday while the third and fourth rounds were both played on Saturday.
It is the successor event of the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, an unofficial match play event played from 1995 to 1998 with a field of 32. It was sponsored by Accenture, the world's largest consulting firm, through 2014. In September 2014, Cadillac was announced as the new title sponsor for 2015.
Maps WGC Match Play
Host courses
From its inauguration in 1999 until 2006, the event was hosted every year by La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, except in 2001, when it was played in Australia at the Metropolitan Golf Club in Victoria. La Costa had previously hosted the Tournament of Champions for thirty years, from 1969 through 1998.
In 2007, the championship moved to Marana, Arizona, a suburb northwest of Tucson. It was played at The Gallery Golf Club for two years, then moved to The Golf Club at Dove Mountain in 2009, a course designed by Jack Nicklaus. The event returned to California in 2015, to TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, which had hosted the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship. In March 2015, it was announced that the 2016-19 tournaments will be played the last week of March in Austin, Texas, with Dell as the title sponsor.
Television
The high-profile event has always received network television coverage in the United States on the weekend. ESPN covered the early rounds from 1999-2006, with the 2001 edition on tape-delay from Australia. Golf Channel has held the cable rights since 2007, which includes live coverage of Sunday morning's action, in addition to weekday rounds. Network coverage was provided by ABC Sports from 1999-2006, with NBC Sports picking up coverage since 2007, with the exception of Olympic years (2010 and 2014), where CBS Sports covered the event on weekends.
Finalists
Seed - the player's seeding in the event.
Rank - the player's world ranking at the date the seedings were determined.
Numbers in parentheses in the table are the number of wins by the golfer.
Records
- Most times won tournament - 3, Tiger Woods (2003, 2004, 2008)
- Most consecutive matches won - 13, Tiger Woods (2003-2005)
- Biggest winning margin: Championship match - 8 & 7, Tiger Woods over Stewart Cink (2008) (36 holes)
- Biggest winning margin: Other matches - 9 & 8, Tiger Woods over Stephen Ames (2006, 1st round)
- Longest championship match - 38 holes, Jeff Maggert over Andrew Magee (1999)
- Longest match (18 holes) - 26 holes, Scott Verplank over Lee Westwood (2006, 1st round), Mike Weir over Loren Roberts (2003, 1st round)
First round results:
References
External links
- Official website
- Coverage on the European Tour's official site
Source of article : Wikipedia
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