World Cup changed to biennial event

The Omega Mission Hills World Cup will return to the calendar in 2011 as a biennial event, with a record prize fund of $7.5m.

The two-man team event, won by Italian brothers Francesco and Edoardo Molinari last year, will be staged at the Mission Hills Resort on Hainan Island in southern China from November 24-27 next year.

The move to a biennial event follows last year’s decision by the International Olympic Committee to reintroduce golf to the Olympics from 2016.

By playing the event in alternate years from 2011, the World Cup is aligned with many of the major sports in the Olympic movement, such as the World Athletics Championships, which are contested biennially and do not clash with the summer and winter Olympic Games.

Next year’s winning team will earn $2.4m. The format will remain unchanged, with two series of foursomes and two series of fourballs on alternate days.

Although Tiger Woods has twice won the World Cup – with Mark O’Meara in 1999 and David Duval in 2000 – many of the game’s top stars have opted to miss the event in recent years.

And Stephen Urquhart, president of Omega, admitted: “In addition to finding a coherent strategy in relation to the Olympics, one of the main reasons for making the World Cup a biennial event is that it should give all the federations involved a better opportunity to send their best teams to represent their country.

“We are confident that we can make important inroads in our primary objective, which is to re-establish the World Cup in its rightful position.”