Rich History of Golf's World Cup

The Omega Mission Hills World Cup has had a rich tradition of attracting the world’s best players throughout its 55 year history but only Mark O’Meara and David Duval can claim to have won the title in the company of the greatest player of this current generation, Tiger Woods. Woods has won the title twice, in 1999 with O’Meara and again the following year with Duval, and those victories will always sit proudly in the annals of this illustrious championship. Woods was playing in the championship for the first time in 1999 when he partnered with his great friend O’Meara. The junior partner had taken the world by storm with his stunning Masters Tournament victory in 1997 and in 1999 he had added the US PGA title to his CV but his quest to chase down Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 Majors was only just starting. But what unfolded at the Mines Resort and Country Club in Malaysia gave a further glimpse of what was to come over the next decade. When O’Meara and Woods stepped on to the tenth tee at The World Cup in Malaysia in 1999, the American pair had just surrendered a seven shot lead over Spain’s Santiago Luna and Miguel Angel Martin and incredibly found themselves one stroke behind. Both players knew they had to do something special to arrest the slide, quickly. O’Meara was in the purple patch of his career having won both The Masters Tournament and The Open Championship the previous year but, by his own admission, had endured a miserable front nine, dropping three shots in the first five holes. That’s when Woods’s caddie Steve Williams intervened. With the senior member of the United States team seemingly struggling, Williams had a quiet word with O’Meara which proved to be the catalyst for their memorable win – but not quite in the way Williams had envisaged. “I played really poorly over the first nine holes and Steve Williams turned to me on the tenth tee and said ‘you’ve got to get yourself going – you need to play better because the Spaniards are coming’,” recalls O’Meara. “So I said to him watch how I handle this and I turned to Tiger and said you’ve got to get yourself going. You need to play better. So he went, ‘Oh okay’, and then he birdied 10, 11, 12 and 13. He was unbelievable that day. He is unbelievable. We went on to win by five shots. I remember him turning to me afterwards and he said ‘Okay, old man, I don’t have to carry you anymore’.” Woods had already eagled the third and a birdied the sixth, before a rare bogey at the eighth but his performance on the back nine was nothing short of sensational, as O’Meara and the World Number One scored final rounds of 77 and 65 respectively for a winning 23 under par total of 545. That saw them finish five shots ahead of Spain, for whom Luna and Martin scored 72 and 68 and nine clear of Ireland’s Padraig Harrington (67) and Paul McGinley (68). It was the United States’s first win since Fred Couples and Davis Love III dominated the competition from 1992 to 1995 and saw the pair share $400,000 but for O’Meara simply sharing the experience with his close friend was reward enough. “I can remember that it was my first time in Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia. I got to play with Tiger which was a real treat,” he said. “It’s been well documented how well I get on with Tiger. He is like a younger brother to me. We have a very close friendship and it was amazing to play with him that day. I really enjoyed that time.” O’Meara is optimistic about the United States’ chances of winning the Omega Mission Hills World Cup in China and adding to his country’s record 23 wins, the last of which came the following year when Duval was Woods’s playing partner. Indeed Boo Weekley and Heath Slocum came close to adding to that tally last year when they lost out to the Scottish team of Colin Montgomerie and Marc Warren. But for O’Meara his win in 1999 was certainly a poignant moment in an illustrious career, as he joined names such as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino as past American winners. He said: “America hasn’t had much success in The Ryder Cup lately so to win the World Cup for our country and to do it alongside Tiger was a very proud moment. “It certainly came at a special time too for me after winning two Majors in 1998 and being named golfer of the year. You don’t expect that at 41.” The 2007 Omega Mission Hills World Cup launched a new and exciting era in the history of the championship first played in 1953 as the Canada Cup. The championship is set to continue through 2018, and most probably beyond, at Mission Hills following the signing of an agreement in January 2007 which brought the prestige watch manufacturer Omega together with the Club which introduced the game of golf to China by first hosting the World Cup in 1995. John Jay Hopkins, the noted Canadian industrialist, brought to reality a dream that golf could promote goodwill between nations with the inaugural World Cup played in Montreal in 1953 then called the Canada Cup and re-titled The World Cup in 1967. The International Federation of PGA Tours will, as custodians, oversee the 54th edition of the event.