WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship

Infobox_Golf_Tournament
tournament_name = WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship
nickname =


location = Marana, Arizona
establishment = 1999
course = The Gallery Golf Club
par = 72
yardage = 7,351
tour = PGA Tour
PGA European Tour
Japan Golf Tour
format = Match play
purse = $8,000,000
month_played = February
score = 8 & 7 Tiger Woods (2008)
Current Champion =Tiger WoodsThe WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship is one of the annual World Golf Championships for male professional golfers. It is a knockout event and is staged in January or February each year. It is sponsored by and named after Accenture, a consulting firm.

From its inauguration in 1999 through 2006 it was hosted every year by La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, except in 2001, when it was hosted by the Metropolitan Golf Club in Victoria, Australia.

In 2007 the event moved to The Gallery Golf Club in Marana, Arizona, a rural community northwest of Tucson, for at least four years. All three of the individual World Golf Championships events will be played in the United States from 2007, which has attracted criticism from some golfers, including Tiger Woods and Ernie Els, and in the media outside the United States. PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem has responded by insisting that playing in the U.S. is best for golf as more money can be made there than elsewhere. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/golf/4753774.stm]

The Championship is a single-elimination match play event. The field consists of the top 64 players available from the Official World Golf Rankings, seeded according to the rankings. The prize money for 2007 was $8 million, with the winner taking $1.35 million (both figures U.S. dollars) and the Walter Hagen Cup. Prize money is official on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour. All matches leading up to the final match are 18 holes, while the final match is 36 holes. In addition, the losers of the semifinal matches play an 18-hole consolation match for third place. The five-day, six-round tournament begins on Wednesday, with a round per day through Friday. The quarterfinals and semifinals are played on Saturday; the finals and third-place match conclude the tournament on Sunday.

It is the successor event of the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, a 32-man, unofficial money, match play event played from 1995-98.

Winners

Records

*Championship match - 8 & 7, Tiger Woods over Stewart Cink (2008)
*All matches - 9 & 8, Tiger Woods over Stephen Ames (2006, 1st round)

=Prize money and FedEx Cup points breakdown=

($1.46740188 = 1 Euro)
* Sources: [ [http://www.worldgolfchampionships.com/2008/tournaments/r470/02/28/results_470/index.html 2008 Accenture Match Play Final Earnings and Points] - from the World Golf Championships official site] [ [http://dps.twiihosting.net/pga/doc/content/doc_528_500.pdf European Tour weekly] - prize breakdown on second page]

References

External links

* [http://www.worldgolfchampionships.com/tournaments/r470 Official site]
* [http://www.europeantour.com/default.sps?pagegid={C1BB48C3-C23F-4408-9C10-A35B9B23033C}&redirectorid=downloadresults&pageNo=1 This Week on the European PGA Tour] - The Tour's weekly newsletter. Editions presented in downloadable PDF file format.
* [http://dps.twiihosting.net/pga/doc/content/doc_528_500.pdf February 19th 2008 edition] - 2008 Prize Money Info is on page 2.