World Golf Championships

The World Golf Championships (WGC) are a group of four annual events for professional golfers created by the International Federation of PGA Tours. All four WGC tournaments are official money events on the PGA Tour, European Tour, and the Japan Golf Tour, and officially sanctioned by the Asian Tour, Sunshine Tour, and PGA Tour of Australasia.

All four WGC events offer comparable prize money to the major championships. In the pantheon of golf events, some rank WGCs immediately below the major championships and above all other competitions; however, others would put The Players Championship, the so-called "Fifth Major," above WGC events. The winner of a WGC event earns a three-year PGA Tour exemption.

The first three events all began in 1999, although the Bridgestone Invitational is the direct successor of the World Series of Golf, which began in 1976 and the Match Play Championship is a direct successor to the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf which began in 1995.

The Cadillac Championship originally traveled to different venues around the world. After 2006 it superseded the Doral Open, a long-standing event at the Doral Resort in Florida.

The HSBC Champions, first held in 2005, was awarded World Golf Championships status, starting with the 2009 edition. It is now the fourth tournament on the worldwide calendar.

In April 2011, the Sunshine Tour announced that it would host a fifth WGC event. The event, to be known as the Tournament of Hope, was to be linked to awareness of poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa. In early 2012 it was announced that the tournament would be played in 2013; later in 2012 it was announced that the tournament would not be a WGC event, but ultimately the tournament never took place.

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