World Golf Championships

At the 1996 Presidents Cup, professional golf’s then five major governing bodies—PGA TOUR, European Tour, Japan Golf Tour Organization, PGA Tour of Australasia, and Southern Africa Tour—came together to discuss the international golf arena. They focused on three things: the formation of the International Federation of PGA Tours, a structured worldwide ranking system, and a need for world competitions jointly sanctioned by the tours. The meeting produced the first ever World Golf Championships.

The World Golf Championships launched in February 1999 as a series of global events that featured the game’s top players competing against each other in a variety of formats. Today, the events are sanctioned and organized by the International Federation of PGA Tours consisting of the world’s six leading professional golf tours—PGA TOUR, PGA European Tour, Japan Golf Tour, PGA Tour of Australasia, Asian PGA and the Southern Africa Tour. The four World Golf Championships include the Dell Technologies Match Play, Bridgestone Invitational, Cadillac Championship, and HSBC Championship.

The World Golf Championships were designed to determine the true champions of the game. Traveling to world-class courses that span five continents, each player competes to prove their worth. Today, the Championship purses are some of the highest in the game. The 2018 Dell Technologies Match Play purse is $9.5 million with $1.62 million to the winner. Television broadcasts amount to nearly 60 hours of combined Championship action annually and fans from over 200 countries watch their regions’ greatest as they strive to become world champions.