Eight stars on missing list for Wentworth

EIGHT players including Sergio Garcia and the world’s top four - Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els - have pulled out of the HSBC World Match Play championship at Wentworth in two weeks’ time.

Defending champion Els is unavailable following knee surgery, while Garcia, Woods, Singh, Mickelson, Chris DiMarco, Fred Couples and Davis Love have all turned down the chance to play.

For the second year running Bernhard Langer has stepped in as one of the reserves. Last October the 48-year-old German knocked out Singh in the opening round, but then was beaten by Miguel Angel Jimenez.

This time there will be eight Europeans in the 16-man line-up competing for golf’s biggest cheque of £1million. David Howell and Paul McGinley were the final players to qualify as the two leading European tour members not otherwise exempt and they join fellow Europeans Colin Montgomerie, Kenneth Ferrie, Luke Donald, Thomas Bjorn, Bernhard Langer and Jose Maria Olazabal.

Completing the field are Australians Steve Elkington, Mark Hensby and Geoff Ogilvy, South Africans Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman and Tim Clark, New Zealand’s reigning US Open champion Michael Campbell and Argentina’s Angel Cabrera.

First round losers earn £60,000 and if the seedings are based on world rankings then as things stand the draw will be (rankings in brackets): (5) Goosen v (116) Ferrie; (23) Montgomerie v (28) Hensby; (19) Campbell v (46) Elkington; (17) Clark v (48) Ogilvy; (14) Donald v (56) Langer; (20) Bjorn v (41) Olazabal; (22) Howell v (33) McGinley; (13) Cabrera v (58) Immelman.