The Final World Golf Championships Event Marks the End of an Era on the PGA Tour

Twenty-four years after their inception, the WGCs will end with the Match Play at Austin Country Club.

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PALM HARBOR, Fla. — This week marks the end of an era. It won’t be celebrated, nor is it official, but all signs point to the demise of the World Golf Championship concept.

This week’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship will be the last at Austin Country Club, and based on preliminary looks at the 2024 schedule, will be replaced by a regular event in Houston as that tournament moves from the fall to the spring.

With the uncertainty of golf in China—home of the WGC-HSBC Champions, which has not been played since 2019—PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan all but threw dirt on the WGC concept when asked about it at the recent Players Championship.

When the WGC-Mexico Championship moved to Florida for one year in 2021 and then was replaced by a regular event in Mexico and the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Championship became part of the FedEx Cup playoffs last year, the WGC model was doomed.

“There for a while, that was a huge goal to get in those WGCs, a massive goal starting the year," said 2019 U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland, who is not in this week’s Match Play event, where Scottie Scheffler will defend his title. “So it’s hard to see them go away, especially the Match Play, because it’s the only one we have. We do the same stuff every week.

“Obviously we’ve got big changes coming next year. And it sounds like it will replace that. At the end of the day, you want the best players in the world playing week in and week out and those are going away right now."

Woodland was referring to the designated events that can be viewed as replacing the WGCs, with more of them. The WGCs were designed as small field, no-cut events that were meant to be prestigious.

Tiger Woods, pictured at the 2011 World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship, won 18 WGCs :: Allan Henry/USA TODAY Sports

The big difference going forward is the designated events will be limited to PGA Tour members. The WGCs allowed qualifying positions via various tours around the world, with the Match Play going strictly off the Official World Golf Ranking. (This week’s event will preclude nine LIV Golfers ranked among the top 64 from competing.)

The WGCs date to 1999 and their origin has a current-day tie-in with Greg Norman, the World Golf Hall of Fame member who is now the commissioner and CEO of LIV Golf—which at the very least has had an indirect impact on the PGA Tour and its move to the designated events.

Norman, when he was in the prime of his career, had proposed an alternative tour in 1994 that would have brought the top players in the world together in a series of big-money tournaments with no cuts.

Called the World Golf Tour, Norman had financing, network TV and a plan for eight tournaments to begin in 1995. Those events would have 40-player fields with the majority taken from the world rankings, then sponsored by Sony. There would also be 10 sponsor exemptions.

The winner would receive $600,000 (most first-place checks then were in the $200,000 range) with last place guaranteed $30,000. Each player who signed on would be guaranteed up to $50,000 in a travel allowance (depending on the number of events played). And the season-ending points leader would earn a $1 million bonus.

Sound familiar? While there was no team aspect, it is very similar what Norman is doing with LIV Golf. (Remember, it’s 30 years on: now it’s $4 million to the winner and $120,000 guaranteed per week.) His idea then and now was to be additive, to allow players to meet their minimum of playing 15 events for the PGA Tour while also competing in the world events.

Unlike LIV Golf, it never got anywhere. Then-PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem cited the same Tour regulations that Monahan has used in the fight with LIV Golf: its conflicting-events rules. That threat stopped Norman 30 years ago. He overcame it with LIV Golf due to the deep pockets of the Public Investment Fund, which has paid huge guaranteed sums in order to sign players.

Much like today, the idea was met with considerable negativity. Arnold Palmer was among its biggest critics, just as Tiger Woods has been a staunch opponent today.

Ultimately, Finchem unveiled a plan for three individual World Golf Championship events with limited fields and guaranteed money. A fourth team event was added which later turned into the tournament played in China. Finchem also announced the formation of the International Federation of PGA Tours, which sought to include tours around the world in the WGCs.

“He hung me out to dry," Norman said then. His last Tour victory came at the 1997 NEC, which two years later was turned into one of the WGCs which eventually became the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Woods won that event at Firestone, then called the NEC Invitational, as well as another WGC that year, the American Express. He would win a total of 18 WGCs. The next best is Dustin Johnson with six and then a trio of players with three each: Phil Mickelson, Geoff Ogilvy and Rory McIlroy.

“I would never say anything has run its course," Monahan said. “But I think right now you see the direction the PGA Tour’s heading in. It is with these designated events, it’s with the concentration of the best players on the PGA Tour competing in them, and I really don’t expect that to change as we go forward."