For the second-consecutive year, the WGC-HSBC Champions in China will not be played, leaving the 2021-2022 PGA Tour schedule now with just a single World Golf Championships event.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan made the announcement during his pre-tournament news conference at the Tour Championship in Atlanta.
“It's unfortunate that we're not going to be able to play in Shanghai. I expect that we will be playing there as soon as it's feasible to do so from a pandemic standpoint,” Monahan said. “We feel like we have got a long-term commitment to that marketplace in the form of a WGC.”
In response, the Bermuda Championship, which was scheduled to be the opposite-field event played at the same time as the WGC-HSBC Champions, will now have its purse increased, offer a standard 500 FedEx Cup points to the winner and offer a berth to the Masters for the champion -- the same circumstances as in 2020.
The PGA Tour still intends to hold the Zozo Championship in Japan from Oct. 21-24, which was to be the precursor to the WGC-HSBC Champions.
“Zozo has been a great partner and we have been in regular contact with the government and local authorities about the plans to successfully stage this event this fall,” Monahan said. “The successful and safe golf competitions at the Tokyo Olympic Games helped provide some confidence going forward there.”
The CJ Cup, which is typically played in South Korea, will remain in Las Vegas for a second year in a row in response to COVID-19 travel concerns. Last season, the Zozo Championship was played at Sherwood Country Club near Los Angeles.
The lone World Golf Championships event will now be the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in Texas from March 23-27. When the Tour announced the schedule for the new season, there were just a pair of WGCs after more than a decade with four on the schedule.
