Columnist Peter Benton: World Cup of golf heads to Mexico

Peter Benton

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002 | 9:43 a.m.

Peter Benton's golf column appears Wednesday.

The EMC World Cup, (formerly known as the World Cup of Golf,) gets under way next week over the 7,153-yard Nicklaus Course at Vista Vallarta in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

This the fourth and final World Golf Championship event of the year and pits two-man teams representing 24 countries from the International Federation of PGA Tours.

Format of play is 2-man competition alternating two days of four-ball and two days of foursomes. The total purse is $3 million (U.S.) with $1 million going to the winning team.

Players from the 18 seeded nations qualified for this year's event by virtue of their standings in the Official World Golf Rankings. The highest ranked available players representing those counties automatically qualified for the tournament. They were joined in the field by the host country, Mexico, with the remaining five teams, Switzerland, Myanmar, Singapore, Venezuela and Columbia gaining entry via qualifying events.

The No. 1 seeded country -- the United States -- is represented by Phil Mickelson and David Toms, the second- and fifth-ranked players in the Official World Golf Rankings.

In last year's event, played at the Taiheiy Club in Gotemba City, Japan, the South African team secured its fourth win in World Cup play. Ernie Els and Retief Goosen won in a playoff over the teams from Denmark (Thomas Bjorn-Soren Hansen) United States, (David Duval-Tiger Woods) and New Zealand (Michael Campbell-David Small) after the four teams had tied with 264s.

The U.S. won the first EMC World Cup in 2000 in Buenos Aires when Woods and Duval had a nail-biting battle with New Zealand and then the home team, Argentina, before emerging victorious.