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Shane Lowry sits in Shanghai over the next day or so as one of the alternates for the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions which gets under way this week with Henrik Stenson one of the names on the watch list.
The Swede is scheduled for an MRI on Tuesday on a swollen right wrist that flared up while practising at home in Orlando
Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy are the Irish contenders in the field with both wanting to improve on last week's four rounds at the BMW Masters presented by SRE Group at Lake Malaren.
Although McIlroy arrives to the event boosted by a win having beaten Tiger Woods in an exhibition match at Mission Hills on Monday.
The course this week is the Sheshan International GC (West), a 7,266 yards, par 72 course and set amid 1,000-year-old gingko trees, manmade waterways and a natural quarry. The Nelson & Haworth design returns as host after a one-year absence when the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions went to Mission Hills.
Sheshan International opened in 2004 as the Shanghai region’s first golf club and remains one of its most exclusive. Tiger Woods once called the layout “the crowning jewel of all of Asian golf.” To create the layout’s drastic elevation changes, work crews reportedly moved more than 2 million cubic yards of earth.
The new FedExCup champion Henrik Stenson and three reigning major winners join defending champ Ian Poulter in the 77-man field. Stenson is up to No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking after winning the Deutsche Bank Championship and TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola in the FedExCup Playoffs and with world No. 1 Tiger Woods and No. 2 Adam Scott sitting out, British Open champion Phil Mickelson is highest ranked player in the field at No. 3.
U.S. Open winner Justin Rose and PGA Championship titleholder Jason Dufner also make the trip. Jordan Spieth, fresh off Rookie of the Year honors, tees it up for the first time in a WGC event. He took three weeks off after The Presidents Cup, where he went 2-2 as a Captain’s Pick.
Former U.S. Amateur champion Peter Uihlein also will make his WGC debut. He won a European Tour stop in Portugal last May.
Last year Poulter roared back from a four-shot deficit entering the final day with a 7-under 65, adding a stroke-play title to his Ryder Cup heroics less than a month earlier. No fewer than five different players topped the leaderboard in the final round, but the English pro proved steadiest in collecting another World Golf Championships title to go with his Accenture Match Play crown in 2010.
The victory allowed Poulter to avoid just his second winless season since turning pro in 1995. Jason Dufner’s closing 64 highlighted a four-way tie for second, two shots off the pace alongside Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Scott Piercy.
This year even without Woods and Scott, the WGC-HSBC Champions has the strongest field of the PGA TOUR’s new fall start.
The lineup features 15 of the top 25 players in this week’s world rankings with Stenson leading the European Tour’s money list entering its four-event Finals series.
Europeans have claimed the trophy in each of the past three years – Poulter, Germany’s Martin Kaymer (2011) and Italy’s Francesco Molinari (2010).
The final field contains 25 of the 2013 European Tour winners, 22 of the 2013 US PGA Tour winners, 40 of the world's top 50 ranked players and 23 Ryder Cup players with 66 appearances between them. The stellar field boasts 19 Majors, 12 World Golf Championships, 244 European Tour victories, 244 US PGA Tour victories and four players who have been ranked number one on the world rankings. T
he USA enjoys the highest representation in the field with 24 American stars hoping to join Phil Mickelson on the winner's roster, while England have ten players and South Africa, the third highest, with eight. There are six Chinese golfers in the field; Wu A-shun, Li Haotong, Huang Mingjie, Hu Mu, Liang Wenchong and Huang Wenyi.
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