The WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship is one of the annual World Golf Championships. It is a knockout event and is staged in January or February each year. It is sponsored by Accenture, the world's largest 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 suburb northwest of Tucson, for two 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.
In 2009, the tournament moved to the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, a Jack Nicklaus-designed course at Dove Mountain in Marana.
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 2011 was $8.5 million, with the winner taking $1.4 million (both figures U.S. dollars) and the Walter Hagen Cup. Prize money is official on the PGA Tour, the European Tour and the Japan Golf Tour. All matches leading up to the final match are 18 holes, while the final match was played over 36 holes from 1999 to 2010 and over 18 holes since 2011. In addition, the losers of the semi-final matches play an 18-hole consolation match for third place. The format is currently a five-day, six-match tournament starting on Wednesday, with a match per day for the first four days. The semifinals, third-place match and final are played on Sunday. When the final was over 36 holes, the quarterfinals and semifinals were both played on Saturday.
It is the successor event of the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, a 32-man, unofficial money, match play event played from 1995 to 1998.
Read more about WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship: Tournament Hosts, Winners, Records, Prize Money and FedEx Cup Points Breakdown
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