My second tournament on tour was the 2008 World Golf Championship (WGC) at Doral and it was amazing!
Why?
China’s Liang Wen-Chong on the practice tee. Cool to see some international players play that I had never seen play before or even heard of.
Because all of the best players in the world were there at Doral competing in a 72-hole medal play tournament. All 79 of them with various qualification scenarios:Top 50 players from the Official World Golf Rankings; Top 30 from the previous year’s final PGA Tour FedEx Cup points list; Top 20 from the final 2007 European Tour Order of Merit; and the Top 3 from the prior year’s final Asian Tour, Japan Golf Tour, PGA Tour of Australasia, and the Sunshine Tour Orders of Merit.
The last few criteria meaning several new players from around the world who had never previously played on the PGA TOUR in America!
In 2008 those players were guys like Japan’s Toru Taniguchi, Sweden’s Robert Karlsson, India’s SSP Chawrasia, South Africa’s Anton Haig, and China’s Liang Wen-Chong.
That was cool and exciting to me. Here were guys that grew up half way around the world and learned to play the same game as I did growing up!
Amazing graphic. Tiger had won six of the previous eight WGC-CAs. If it was a WGC, it was Tiger’s back then!
Looking at the picture of previous WGC champions and one quickly recalls how dominant Tiger Woods was back then. A battle with Phil Mickelson before when Tiger was leading the Majors Battle 13-3.
Geoff Ogilvy validated his 2006 United States Open title with his second World Golf Championship winning nearly wire-to-wire with only Miguel Angel Jimemez managing to match his open round of 65.
But my memories are really in the pictures and here they are:
