World Golf Championships- HSBC Champions Westwood looking to do better than Second Place

The golf world is once again treated to another great event this week in Shanghai, China I am referring to the World Golf Championships HSBC Champions. This tournament has been played since 2005, but it was in 2009 that the event became part of the WGC tournaments and this only helps to raise the prize money and also the status of the field.

Once a tournament becomes part of the WGC you can be guaranteed that there will be better names in the field and this only boosts the revenue at the event because bigger names means more fans want to come out and see the action and that only means money made from the ticket sales also from food and beverages.

The event has now managed to gather a nice seven million for prize money and the tournament will be played at Sheshan Golf Club in Shanghai, before it was an WGC it was simply called the HSBC Champions and an interesting fact about this event is that Tiger Woods has never won it, but he has finished runner up twice at the event.

On the other hand Phil Mickelson has managed to win this event twice and you will be surprised to hear that the player that set the scoring record for this tournament was Englishman David Howell in 2005 when he shot twenty under par and beat Tiger Woods by three strokes.

Another player that has finished runner up twice is Lee Westwood he did so in 2007 losing in a playoff against Mickelson and the again lost last year by one stroke to Francesco Molinari who shot nineteen under for the event.

The favorites this week will have to be Rory McIlroy who currently is on fire he won last week and before that he managed to string together four consecutive top threes, last year he took home a fifth place here in China.

Others to watch out for are Thomas Bjorn who had a good week at Valderrama and has won three times this year in Europe. But my sleeper player has to be Keegan Bradley what a year he has had so far and just remember this is his first year on the Big Tour, only good things in the future for Bradley.