In December, the World Champions Cup will be held at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida. It will be the first foreign team event for the PGA TOUR Champions. From Thursday to Sunday, Dec. 7–10, the team event will take place. There will be competitions for three days and a pro-am on Saturday, Dec. 9.
There will be three teams in the World Champions Cup: Team International, Team Europe, and Team USA. Each day of the tournament, the teams will play against each other. Ernie Els from South Africa will be the playing captain for Team International. Darren Clarke from Northern Ireland will be the captain for Team Europe, and Jim Furyk from Pennsylvania will be the captain for Team USA. Peter Jacobsen, a seven-time PGA TOUR winner, will be the tournament chairman.
Making up a team
Each team will have six players, one of whom will be the Playing Captain and the other will be the Vice Captain. Two players on each team automatically qualified for the World Cup based on the Historical Rankings. There are two Chairman’s Selections on each team. These players were chosen by the Chairman alone. The top person in the Charles Schwab Cup standings at the end of the year gets a play-in spot to be the sixth player on each team. The last spot on each team is a Chairman’s Selection if any of the players who qualify through the play-in place have already been named to a team as an automatic qualifier or Chairman’s Selection. As Vice Captains, you won’t play, but you will help the Captains set up the games for each of the World Champions Cup’s six rounds. Someone who is Vice Captain will be added to the playing roster for the rest of the game in case a player gets hurt and can’t play.
Format Type
The World Champions Cup is a three-day tournament for teams. There will be 24 nine-hole matches, with both teams and individuals playing.
On Thursday and Friday, there will be competitions for Six Ball in the morning and Scotch Sixsomes in the afternoon. Two players from each team will play in each match. Twelve singles matches will be played on Sunday to end the event.
Scotch Sixsomes is a modified version of alternate-shot that is played by teams. Each person hits a tee shot, and then the team picks which tee shot to play from. From there, alternate-shot play starts, with the player whose drive wasn’t picked hitting the second shot on the hole.
All nine holes of the game will be played in each World Champions Cup match. There will be no close-outs.
Keeping score
• Each hole of every nine-hole match on Thursday and Friday (team competition) and in the morning and afternoon of Sunday (Singles competition) will be worth three points.
• Two points will be given to the team with the lowest score on each hole. One point will be given to the team with the second-lowest score on a hole. The team with the most points will not get any more.
• If two teams finish a hole with the same score, they will both get the same number of points.
• Each team will get one and a half points if two teams finish with the same score on a hole. The third team will get no points even though it has the best score.
This means that if three teams play a hole and all three finish with the same (higher) score, the team with the lowest score gets two points and the other two teams get one half point.
• Each team will get one point if all three teams finish a hole with the same score.
• If there are two or three teams tied at the end of the game, the leaders of those teams will play in a sudden-death playoff to see who wins the first game.
• In singles, one person from each team will play in both the morning and afternoon sessions. The scoring for each match will be the same as above.
Lists of teams
The International Team
• Ernie Els (First Captain)
• Vijay Singh (Qualifier by Automatic Click)
• Retief Goosen (Qualifier by Automatic)
• Steven Alker (chosen by the chairman)
• Stephen Ames (chosen by the chairman)
• K.J. Choi (chosen by the chairman)
• Vice-Captain Stuart Appleby
Europe’s Team
• Captain of the team Darren Clarke
• Bernhard Langer (Qualifier by Automatic)
• Colin Montgomerie (Qualifier by Automatic)
• Miguel Angel Jiménez (chosen by the chairman)
• Robert Karlsson (chosen by the chairman)
• Alex Čejka (chosen by the chairman)
• Vice Captain Jesper Parnevik
The USA team
• Jim Furyk (Captain in Charge)
• Steve Stricker (Qualifier by Automatic)
• David Toms (Qualifier by Automatic)
• Jerry Kelly (chosen by the chairman)
• Justin Leonard (chosen by the chairman)
• Brett Quigley (chosen by the chairman)
• Billy Andrade (Vice Flag Officer)
Purse
The World Champions Cup has a $1.35 million prize pool. The winning team gets $100,000 for each player, the second-place team gets $75,000, and the third-place team gets $50,000.
