Can the New Look World Match Play Regain Its Place Amongst Golfs Best Tournaments?

The World Match Play Golf Championships returns once again in 2009 and is now in almost unrecognisable format and will be played for the first time outside of its traditional home of Wentworth in the UK Instead, this year the tournament will be held at the Finca Cortes?n Golf Club near Malaga in Spain and a completely new format will be adopted

The World Match Play Golf Championships returns once again in 2009 and is now in almost unrecognisable format and will be played for the first time outside of its traditional home of Wentworth in the UK. Instead, this year the tournament will be held at the Finca Cortes?n Golf Club near Malaga in Spain and a completely new format will be adopted.

There is no doubt that this once highly prestigious tournament has been in decline in recent years so much so that it was not even played in 2008.

The reasons are complex but in a nutshell they are mainly due to the advent of the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship in the USA, which unlike the World Match Play, awarded world ranking points and where the prize money of players was added to the top money winners list on the PGA tour.

This was changed quite quickly afterwards but during this period the standard of entries also dwindled, from a field that usually included at least eight of the top ten players in the world it went rock bottom and in 2005 there was not a single US player in the field. Although this improved again in 2006 when Tiger Woods played a bigger problem came to bear with the withdrawal of the main sponsors, the world?s local bank, HSBC. Their withdrawal left the tournament almost in ruins and very close to being scrapped altogether; there was no tournament at all in 2008.

However, the tournament?s administrators have worked very hard and have compromised in many areas to secure a future for the tournament and it will return to golfing calendar at the end of October in Spain.

The format will change completely too, with 16 players being divided into four groups and playing each other on a round robin basis. The winners of each group will qualify to play in a 36 hole semi final, where the finalists will be decided. The qualifying criteria will also be changed allowing a more multi-national participation and a total prize pot of ?3.25 million being up for grabs with ?750,000 going to the winner.

The new format and the huge prize money on offer should enable the best players in the world to participate. Golf fans should realise that this tournament is steeped in history and some of the greatest names in modern golf have had their names added to the Roll of Honour. Players such as Gary Player, who won five times, Arnold palmer who won the very first tournament in 1964, he went on to win again in 1967. Jack Nicklaus won it in 1970, Greg Norman in 1980 and 1986, Seve Ballesteros is a five time winner, Nick Faldo won twice and was runner up three times.

The greatest winner of them all however is the great South African, Ernie Els who has won the event a record seven times including and fittingly the last time it was contested in 2007. Probably the two most notable names missing are that of world number one, Tiger Woods and eight time major winner, Tom Watson ? but perhaps one of these two great men will finally get there in 2009.

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