The WGC Match Play, currently titled as the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play for sponsorship reasons, is a professional men's
golf tournament that has been held since 1999. It is the only one of the
World Golf Championships to have been contested using the
match play format. Since 2016, it has been held at the
Austin Country Club
Austin Country Club is a private golf club in the southern United States, located in Austin, Texas. Established in 1899, the club moved to its third and present site in 1984, a challenging layout designed by noted course architect Pete Dye.
The p ...
in
Austin, Texas, United States.
Previous names include WGC-Dell Match Play (2015), WGC-Cadillac Match Play (2014), WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship (2001–2013), and WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship (1999–2000). Before moving to
Austin
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
it had been hosted in
Arizona eight times,
California eight times, and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
once. It is sanctioned and organized by the
International Federation of PGA Tours and the prize money is official money on the
PGA Tour, the
European Tour and the
Japan Golf Tour.
Tiger Woods has the record number of wins with three.
The winner receives a
Wedgwood trophy named the Walter Hagen Cup.
History
Match Play tournaments before 1999
The
match play format fell out of favor in professional individual golf tournaments with the growth of television. The two major match play tournaments in the pre TV era were the
PGA Championship, which converted to
stroke play
Stroke play, also known as medal play, is a scoring system in the sport of golf in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 holes. In stroke play, the winner is the player who has taken the fewest strokes over the ...
format in 1958, and the
British PGA Matchplay Championship which faced a slow decline after the introduction of the
British PGA Championship in 1955 (which had a stroke play format), and eventually became defunct in 1979. Match play became mainly associated with amateur tournaments, and team tournaments such as the
Ryder Cup
The Ryder Cup is a biennial men's golf competition between teams from Europe and the United States. The competition is contested every two years with the venue alternating between courses in the United States and Europe. The Ryder Cup is named af ...
.
Despite not being popular with television companies, and often requiring more rounds to be played by a player than a stroke play event, the format was still respected as offering a different challenge than stroke play. At the end of the 1990s, there were two significant unofficial match play tournaments, the relatively new
Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, which had a 32-man field with the finals played in
Arizona,
and the much older
World Match Play Championship, which had a field of 16 players or less and was played in
England.
Early years in southern California and briefly Australia (1999–2006)
When the
World Golf Championships were formed in 1999, it was decided one of the events would be held in match play format, which meant the return of an official match play event on the
PGA Tour and the
European Tour. The WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play was in effect the successor of the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, which was discontinued.
The World Match Play Championship in England continued, but lost prestige after the introduction of the WGC event, and eventually became defunct in 2014. The format of the new WGC competition was a straight knock out tournament involving the top 64 players in the
Official World Golf Ranking
The Official World Golf Ranking is a system for rating the performance level of professional golfers. It was started in 1986.
The rankings are based on a player's position in individual tournaments (i.e. not pairs or team events) over a "rolli ...
, with each match played over 18 holes, except the final which was played over 36 holes. The first two events were held in February 1999 and 2000 at the
La Costa Resort and Spa in Southern
California.
In 2001, the tournament sponsor was renamed, and the tournament followed suit, becoming known as the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. The tournament was held in early January by the highly regarded
Metropolitan Golf Club in
Melbourne,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
. Nearly forty players turned down their invitation, including six of the top ten. This was largely seen as because it was played very early in the year when some players have an off season, and for many players the travel time was too long when playing a single tournament where you could end up playing just a single round. The following year the tournament returned to
La Costa Resort and Spa in Southern
California where it remained until 2006.
Hosting in the Tucson, Arizona area (2007–2014)
In
2007
File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...
and
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
, it was played at
The Gallery Golf Club
The Gallery Golf Club is located east of Marana, Arizona, northwest of Tucson at Dove Mountain. The two 18-hole courses are approximately seven miles east of Interstate 10 at an average elevation of 2875 feet (850 m) above sea level. The Ritz-Carl ...
at
Dove Mountain
Dove Mountain is a master-planned community located in Marana, Arizona, about 40 minutes outside of Tucson Retrieved 2008-02-23. and in the foothills of the Tortolita Mountains. Retrieved 2008-02-23. The area gets its name from the mountain r ...
in
Marana, Arizona, and from 2009 to 2014 at the nearby
Ritz-Carlton Golf Club
The Golf Club at Dove Mountain is a golf course in the southwestern United States, located in Marana, Arizona, northwest of Tucson. For six years it hosted the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, a match play tournament on the PGA Tour and th ...
(renamed as simply "The Golf Club at Dove Mountain" in 2013). Tiger Woods is the most successful player in the WGC Match Play, and he won his three titles in Arizona, although he was less dominant than he was in the other U.S.-based
World Golf Championship
The World Golf Championships (WGC) are a group of annual professional golf tournaments created by the International Federation of PGA Tours as a means of gathering the best players in the world together more frequently than the pre-existing four ...
events.
Geoff Ogilvy became the second most successful player in the tournament's history after winning in
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
and
2009
File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...
and finishing runner up in
2007
File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...
. Despite normal highs of 69 °F (21 °C) in Marana in February, the tournament was delayed by snow/
hailstones
Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fa ...
in
2011
File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...
, and
snow in
2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...
.
Also in 2011, the format of the final was reduced to 18 holes instead of 36 holes, similar to the other rounds of the tournament.
Format changes, a year in California, then Austin (2015 onwards)
As well as the intermittent weather issues in Dove Mountain, the performance of the WGC Match Play was a concern for other reasons, with Rex Hoggard of the
Golf Channel remarking "Since 2007, when the Tour uprooted the Match Play from La Costa for the Tucson highlands, the galleries have been thin, the golf courses have been tolerated and the Sundays have been largely undistinguished". In 2015 the tournament underwent a revamp, moving to
TPC Harding Park, a municipal course owned by the city and county of
San Francisco, and became sponsored by
Cadillac
The Cadillac Motor Car Division () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets are the United States, Canada, and China. Cadillac models are distributed i ...
(who also sponsored the
WGC Championship
The WGC Championship was a professional golf tournament that was held between 1999 and 2021. It was one of the three or four annual World Golf Championships until the number of WGC events was reduced to two following the 2021 season.
Under sp ...
). The tournament moved from February to April 27 – May 3, the week prior to
The Players Championship. The structure was changed so the field was split into 16 four-player groups played on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with the player with the best record advancing. The four knockout rounds are then split over Saturday and Sunday. The format ensured that spectators could guarantee to see the entire field on the first three days, and some coverage would occur in primetime in the
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, the Atlantic Coast, and the Atlantic Seaboard, is the coastline along which the Eastern United States meets the North Atlantic Ocean. The eastern seaboard contains the coa ...
.
After one year in California, the tournament moved to March with a new long term home and sponsor, the
Austin Country Club
Austin Country Club is a private golf club in the southern United States, located in Austin, Texas. Established in 1899, the club moved to its third and present site in 1984, a challenging layout designed by noted course architect Pete Dye.
The p ...
in
Texas, and
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
(which is headquartered in greater Austin area). The following year, as a result of the title sponsor's involvement in a merger the tournament became known as the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. In 2015,
Jason Day became the third player to win multiple WGC Match Plays,
and in 2016
Dustin Johnson won to become the only player to have won all four
World Golf Championships.
In early 2019, a deal was signed for Dell Technologies to remain the sponsor, and Austin Country Club the host, until at least 2023.
Structure
Field
The tournament has a field of 64 players filled based upon the following criteria:
* Top 64 players from the
Official World Golf Ranking
The Official World Golf Ranking is a system for rating the performance level of professional golfers. It was started in 1986.
The rankings are based on a player's position in individual tournaments (i.e. not pairs or team events) over a "rolli ...
(ten days prior to the event).
* If anyone within the top 64 is not available the field is filled by the next highest ranked player in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Format
The tournament is split into two phases:
* The players are split into 16 groups of four players (each group has a player seeded 1–16, 17–32, 33–48, 49–64). Each group plays in a
round-robin format over Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. One point is awarded for a win, and one-half point for a tie, with only the group winner qualifying to the next round. If two or more players are tied at the top of the group, there is a sudden death stroke play tie-breaker played to decide who progresses.
* The second phase is played as a knock out tournament, with the round of 16 and quarterfinals played on Saturday, and the semifinal, third-place playoff and final played on Sunday.
All matches are played over 18 holes.
Winners
:
Seed – the player's seeding in the event.
Rank – the player's world ranking at the date the seedings were determined.
* The championship match was originally 36 holes (1999–2010); 18 holes since 2011.
Multiple winners
Three players have won the tournament more than once:
*3 wins:
**
Tiger Woods: 2003, 2004, 2008
*2 wins:
**
Geoff Ogilvy: 2006, 2009
**
Jason Day: 2014, 2016
The title has been successfully defended only once, by Woods in 2004.
Records
*Most consecutive matches won – 13,
Tiger Woods (2003–2005)
*Biggest winning margin: Championship match – 8 & 7,
Tiger Woods over
Stewart Cink
Stewart may refer to:
People
* Stewart (name), Scottish surname and given name
*Clan Stewart, a Scottish clan
*Clan Stewart of Appin, a Scottish clan
Places
Canada
* Stewart, British Columbia
*Stewart Township, Nipissing District, Ontario (hist ...
(
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
) (36 holes)
*Biggest winning margin: Other matches – 9 & 8,
Tiger Woods over
Stephen Ames
Stephen Michael Ames (born April 28, 1964) is a professional golfer formerly of the PGA Tour, who now plays on the PGA Tour Champions. The biggest win of his career was at The Players Championship in 2006. He holds dual citizenship of Trinidad an ...
(
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
, 1st round)
*Longest championship match – 38 holes,
Jeff Maggert over
Andrew Magee
Andrew Donald Magee (born May 22, 1962) is an American professional golfer who played for more than 20 years on the PGA Tour.
Magee was born in Paris, France, where his father, a Texas oil man, was working at the time. He grew up in Dallas, Texa ...
(
1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...
)
*Longest match (18 holes) – 26 holes,
Scott Verplank over
Lee Westwood
Lee John Westwood (born 24 April 1973) is an English professional golfer. Noted for his consistency, Westwood is one of the few golfers who has won tournaments on five continents – Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania – including ...
(
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
, 1st round),
Mike Weir over
Loren Roberts (2003, 1st round)
:
Facts and Figures - WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship
/ref>
Notes
References
External links
*
{{coord, 37.725, N, 122.493, W, type:event, display=title
World Golf Championships
PGA Tour events
European Tour events
Golf in Texas
Sports in Austin, Texas
Recurring sporting events established in 1999
Annual sporting events in the United States