Golf Tour news: It's not so much a gravy train as a licence to print money; and, for the elite of the elite, this part of the elongated season is designed to inflate already huge bank balances.
So Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke have pencilled in the $5.5 million Target World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California, starting on Thursday, as the final act in a year that, for both, has been emotionally and mentally demanding.
With just 14 players in the field, and $1.3 million for the winner, the World Challenge was conceived and is hosted by Tiger Woods to benefit his charity, the Tiger Woods Foundation. In the two years Woods has won his own tournament, he has donated the prize money back to the charitable kitty.
For others, though, it is another title to pursue.
Clarke has decided to play because his wife, Heather, who is undergoing a second bout of chemotherapy, has shown some improvement in her fight with cancer. In fact, she was in Sun City last week where Clarke was denied by a chip-in birdie at the second play-off hole by winner Jim Furyk in the Nedbank Challenge.
Clarke, who didn't play in this event last year, is making his third appearance at Sherwood. He has won twice in America, in the 2000 Accenture World Matchplay and the 2003 NEC Invitational.
For Harrington, it is a return to a course that has been good to him. The Dubliner, who won twice on the PGA Tour this season (in the Honda Classic and the Barclays Classic), won the Target in 2002 when he shot a course-record 63 in the third round to fend off Woods. Last year, the Dubliner's fast finish saw him finish runner-up to Woods.
The Irish duo are part of a five-strong European contingent in the field.
Thomas Bjorn and Luke Donald are making their debuts, while Colin Montgomerie, who has jumped to ninth in the world rankings following his win in the Hong Kong Open, is also competing.
Monty and Bjorn received invitations from Woods to play in the tournament.
Last year, Woods joined Davis Love as the only two-time winners of the tournament. This year's field also includes world number two Vijay Singh, but is missing US PGA champion Phil Mickelson, who has taken an early winter break.
Michael Campbell, the US Open champion, is playing for the second time, and will do so after being named the PGA European Tour's player of the year for 2005, an accolade afforded him yesterday at a selection meeting held in London.
Harrington's achievement in winning twice in the US, where he finished 14th on the money list with $2,615,731, earned him consideration, as did Paul McGinley's career-best season in which he finished third on the European Tour Order of Merit with winnings of €2,296,422. McGinley capped off a magnificent season which saw him rise from 68th in the world rankings to 18th after his season-closing win in the Volvo Masters.
He also had three runners-up finishes, including losing to Campbell in the final of the HSBC World Matchplay at Wentworth.
Campbell, though, was the unanimous choice of the selection committee, after a year in which he won the US Open at Pinehurst and finished second to Montgomerie in the Order of Merit.
Montgomerie's feat in winning an eighth Order of Merit title made him the closest challenger to Campbell for the player of the year honours, but the Kiwi's transformation, highlighted by his major triumph, earned him the tribute.
It was an extraordinary year for Campbell, who started the season by missing five successive cuts, a sequence that saw him finish 122nd, 101st, 142nd, 136th and 76th in a run of form where he failed to break 70 in any round.
He was so lowly placed in the world rankings he didn't receive an invitation to the US Masters, and got into the US Open only by coming through international qualifying at Walton Heath.
He also had top-10 finishes in the season's other two majors, the British Open (tied-fifth ) and the US PGA (tied-sixth), and the New Zealander added the World Matchplay to his list of honours when he defeated McGinley in the final.
"This accolade sets the seal on a season I will never forget," remarked Campbell, who started the year ranked 80th in the world. "The European Tour helped me to become the player that I am. Over the last 10 years, I've learned a lot about myself and my golf game."
While the world's elite players fight it out for a purse of $5.5 million in California, the early part of the European Tour's 2006 season moves on to South Africa for this week's Dunhill championship, where there will be four Irish players in the field.
Damien McGrane, fresh from his top-10 finish in Hong Kong, Gary Murphy, David Higgins and Stephen Browne are competing at Leopards Creek.
