The PGA Tour began World Golf Championships play in 1999.
The World Golf Championships were created by the International Federation of PGA Tours to bring the world’s leading golfers together more often than the four major championships. The first WGC events were staged in 1999, and they became official-money events on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour, with sanctioning from other major tours.
The original group included the WGC Championship, WGC Match Play and WGC Invitational. Although those events began in 1999, their predecessors can create confusion: the World Series of Golf dates to 1976, while the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf began in 1995. Those earlier tournaments were later folded into WGC-branded events or provided their historical lineage.
The WGC series eventually expanded to include the WGC World Cup and WGC Champions. The PGA Tour announced that the 2023 WGC Match Play would be the final WGC tournament, ending a 24-year run. That later ending does not change the 1999 start date.