Wachovia Championship field to include 23 Major winners
IN: News | US PGA | Wachovia Championship (2004) | General | 30 Apr 2004
Mike Weir, winner of the 2003 Masters has joined what is shaping up to be an extremely strong field for the second annual Wachovia Championship at Quail Hollow, May 3-9.
Stewart Cink, winner of the MCI Heritage two weeks ago, and Chad Campbell, winner of the 2003 TOUR Championship, also committed today. The Wachovia Championship, a 72-hole tournament that features a whopping US$5.6 million purse, will pay US$1,008,000 to the winner. David Toms is the defending champion.
Weir is one of 15 players in the field who have combined to win 23 major championships. That number could increase because players have until the end of the week to enter the tournament.
The major champions in the field have combined to win five Masters Tournaments, five U.S. Opens, four British Opens and nine PGA Championships.
The field also features 31 of the top-50 ranked players in the world, including Vijay Singh (2) winner of last week's rain-delayed tournament, Davis Love III (4) and current Masters champion Phil Mickelson (6) Weir, the No. 5-ranked player in the world, is coming off a breakthrough season in which he won three times, including the Masters, and missed just one cut all season. He finished fifth on the money list with earnings of more than US$4.8 million.
The Canadian left-hander is having another outstanding year with a victory in the Nissan Open plus two other top-five finishes. Singh, winner of the recently concluded Shell Houston Open, is actually No. 1 in the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index. In the past 12 months, Singh has won five tournaments, finished second six times and posted 21 top-10 finishes in 31 events.
Singh is coming off a career season is which he shattered personal records in virtually every category. Besides winning four times, Singh also won his first PGA TOUR money title (US$7,573,907) and was the runner-up to Tiger Woods in the coveted Player of the Year race. Love also had a spectacular season in 2003 with four victories and surpassed the US$6-million mark in single-season earnings for the first time. He was the PGA TOUR's leading money winner for 14 weeks and finished third in the money race. In his second start of 2003, he won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am for the second time in three years.
Love has 18 wins on the PGA TOUR, including two Players Championships and the 1997 PGA Championship. Mickelson, who won his first major victory when he captured the Masters Tournament at Augusta National earlier this month, ended 2003 as the 15th-ranked player in the world, but his fast start this year has moved him up to No. 6.
Other top world-ranked players in the field include Toms (15), Stuart Appleby (10), Nick Price (18), Jay Haas (20), Chris DiMarco (21), Fredrick Jacobson (20), Robert Allenby (24), Shigeki Maruyama (25) Brad Faxon (32), Justin Leonard (33) and Sergio Garcia (35).
Source - Wachovia Championship
