10 opt to skip HSBC Champions event
Thursday, 29 October 2009Ten players - eight of them American, including US Open champion Lucas Glover - have turned down places in next week's HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai.
The event becomes part of the World Golf Championships series for the first time and has prize-money totalling £4.2million.
But while the sponsors are naturally delighted that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are in the 78-strong field, the list of withdrawals will not go down so well.
Glover's compatriots Steve Stricker - the current world number three - Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson, Kenny Perry, Scott Verplank, Dustin Johnson and Heath Slocum, plus Fiji's Vijay Singh and South African Tim Clark are not making the trip.
The World Championships have all been staged in the United States since The Grove in England was the venue for the American Express Championship in 2006.
Since the series started 10 years ago the Accenture Match Play has only once been taken out of America - that was in Australia in 2001 and the field was the weakest ever - and the Bridgestone Invitational has always been at the Firestone course in Akron.
