2004 gets underway in Hawaii
IN: News | US PGA | Mercedes Championships (2004) | Preview | by Bruce Young | 06 Jan 2004
The golfing year for 2004 gets underway on this Thursday when thirty of golf's leading players line up for the Mercedes Championship at the Plantation Course in Kapalua, on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
The event carries a purse of $US5.3 million, with the winner to get the year off to a flying start with a $US1.06 million cheque.
2003 champion Ernie Els will be back to defend the title he won by seven shots over K.J. Choi and Rocco Mediate. It would be the first of two consecutive wins for Els as he would go on to win the Sony Open in a playoff with Aaron Baddeley the following week on Honolulu. In fact in his first five events of 2003 Els would record four wins and a second.
Els' last win was the HSBC World Match Play at Wentworth in October although his last competitive event was the Nedbank Challenge where, as a golfer drained of energy, he seemed to only go through the motions when finishing 17th out of 18 players in the field.
Back refreshed and with a good record at the Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw designed Plantation Course, Els is sure to be hard to beat again.
The event is essentially the previous "Tournament of Champions" but renamed the Mercedes Championship in 1994 and brings together all the winners from the previous season. The event switched from its home at La Costa in California to Hawaii in 1999.
Two-time winner Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Davis Love, Jim Furyk, Mike Weir, Retief Goosen and Chad Campbell head this year's list but with a field of this quality, it is anybody's race.
Stuart Appleby by virtue of his Las Vegas win and Adam Scott, here courtesy of his win at the Deutsche Bank event in Boston, will fly the Australian flag. The only Australian to have previously won the event was Steve Elkington, who claimed the title in both 1992 and 1995.
