The Hero World Challenge was the charity golf event which rang in the millennium back in 2000 and has become a mainstay of the PGA calendar in the run-up to Christmas. The field is usually star-studded and bursting with golfing superstars, and 2024’s renewal likely to be no different.
Hero World Challenge: Golfing Paradise as The World’s Elite Head to Barbados
When Tiger Woods set up his charitable foundation in 1996 it was clear golf was going to be at its heart, and so the World Challenge was born. And Tiger, being Tiger, made sure the arrival of this new tournament would grab headlines like only he could. The Williams World Challenge, as the new event was going to be called, was only an invitational event, didn’t carry world ranking points and featured just 16 players.
But scheduling it on either side of the start of the millennium between December 29 and January 2, 2000, was an inspired move with the world in holiday mood and millions tuning in to watch. And just to make sure Tiger’s brainchild got even more attention, videos of Phil Mickelson chipping in at the 18th on a hail-covered green at Grayhawk in Scottsdale, Arizona, was all the publicity it needed.
Hero World Challenge: Tiger’s Vision
Mickelson didn’t win that inaugural tournament, Tom Lehman instead collecting the $1m winner’s cheque. And the tournament was deemed so successful that what could have been no more than a one-off was immediately pencilled in for a second time in the first week of December 2000 and it has been there ever since.
Sherwood Country Club in California hosted the second running of the event with former US PGA winner Davis Love III the victor by two strokes from Woods. Tiger would make it third time lucky in 2001 with the first of five wins in 11 years. The other multiple winners at Sherwood were Love, who also won in 2003, and Northern Ireland’s former US Open champion Graeme McDowell, who triumphed in 2010 and 2012.
Hero World Challenge: Albany Awaits
In 2014, the tournament was renamed the Hero World Challenge and relocated to Isleworth in Florida, though only for the one running. Instead, 12 months later, the elite field were flown out to Albany Golf Course in the Bahamas and that has been the home track ever since. The first winner at Albany was Bubba Watson with a 25-under-par total, a low score which has not been bettered since. A succession of world-class golfers have gone on to lift the trophy with Hideki Matsuyama, Rickie Fowler, Jon Rahm and Henrik Stenson winning the four events prior to the Covid-enforced cancellation in 2020.
Hero World Challenge: Roll of Honour
Viktor Hovland beat Scottie Scheffler on its return in 2021 and to prove that was no fluke beat the same man into second once again to retain the trophy a year later. But you can’t keep a good man down, certainly not Scheffler, with the world number one adding his name in 2023 to the roll of honour of a tournament that has become a festive favourite for golf fans just before Christmas.
By James Mason
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