The End of the World Golf Championships May Be Coming
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The demise of the World Golf Championship events that have been around for nearly a quarter century appeared inevitable given that there is just one on the schedule in 2023.
But a final blow to the concept seems all but certain with the Golfweek report last week that this years WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship will be the final one at Austin Country Club, where the event moved in 2016.
Citing multiple sources, Golfweek reported that a dispute with the club over rental fees has caused the PGA Tour to move on from the Texas location, paving the way for the Cadence Bank Houston Open to return to a spring date.
The PGA Tour has not confirmed any of this, suggesting it is working through issues. And the Tour obviously does not want this to be a distraction for this year’s event, which will feature the top 64-ranked players in the world (or those beyond 64) in what is now a designated event with a $20 million purse.
While the WGCs seemed on shaky ground regardless, this situation appears to be a case of a self-inflicted wound. The Tour seemingly was on board with returning to Austin Country Club, there was a dispute, and then they decided to part ways.
What this means for the actual concept of a match play tournament remains to be seen. It would make sense to try and keep the format and it could simply re-emerge as an elevated event somewhere in the schedule. The last thing the Tour needs at this point is to lose an alternative format.
Nonetheless, the WGC concept appears on its way out. And it was headed that way before last year when the Tour elected to turn the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational into the first FedEx Cup playoff event. Previously, that had been the WGC-Bridgestone, an event frequently won by Tiger Woods.
The other U.S.-based WGC that had moved to Mexico City in 2017 and was played for one year in Florida became a regular tour stop last year in Mexico—won by Jon Rahm—without the WGC distinction. The WGC-HSBC Champions in China has not been played since 2019 due to COVID-19 and its future remains very much in doubt anyway.
It is with some irony that the very formation of the World Golf Championships was viewed as a response to Greg Norman’s world tour concept in the early 1990s, one that was foiled when then-commissioner Tim Finchem made it clear that PGA Tour members would not be permitted to partake. A few years later, in 1999, the WGCs were born.
Now, in response to the Norman-led LIV Golf League, the PGA Tour put forth its “designated events’’ concept, 12 locked-in tournaments with big purses and the expectation that all of the top players will participate. With those 12 events, plus the four majors, the Players and three more that a player is expected to choose, that’s 20 tournaments.
There’s really no need for the World Golf Championships concept anymore.
Where it may hurt is the access those events gave to tours around the world, although the PGA Tour has sought to provide a pathway through the DP World Tour, which has opened doors to tours in Japan and Korea.
One shorter-term issue this may help resolve is the idea of keeping a four-tournament Florida swing. The Houston tournament appeared intent on getting back into the spring schedule, and one possible landing spot was the date for the Honda Classic.
Honda is ending its sponsorship after this year, and Houston was a prime candidate to fill a gap in the spring. With it taking over the Match Play slot, there is more incentive for the Tour to find a new title for the Honda tournament.
So if and when this becomes official, it certainly creates some intriguing possibilities.