The World Golf Championships (WGC) were a group of annual professional golf tournaments played from 1999 through 2023 created by the International Federation of PGA Tours as a means of gathering the best players in the world together more frequently than the pre-existing four major championships.
[citation needed] The WGC tournaments offered comparable prize money to the major championships.
The WGC concept was introduced to create a larger group of golf tournaments with a high global profile by bringing the leading golfers from different tours together on a more regular basis, rather than just for the major championships.
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem responded by insisting that playing in the U.S is best for golf as more money can be made there than elsewhere.
[7] This criticism has been muted since the 2009 elevation of the HSBC Champions, held in China, to full WGC status.
In addition, the WGC-Mexico Championship in 2017 marked the move of half the WGC events to outside the United States.
At the end of the 2021 season, the number of WGC events was reduced to two, the Match Play and the HSBC Champions.