After 44 years at its spiritual home of Wentworth, the World Match Play Championship will not be played this year and will resurface in a new guise in southern Spain in 2009. Last year the championship lost HSBC as its title sponsor after five years and Volvo has stepped in, with a round-robin tournament to be played at the Finca Cortesín course, near Marbella.

The competition will be made up of four groups of four, each participant playing three matches on the first two days over 18 holes, with the group winners going through to play 36-hole semi-finals on the Saturday and the final a day later. The first prize will not match the £1million that HSBC put up annually, but, with a shade less than £600,000 going to the winner and about £90,000 to those finishing bottom of their groups, there will be plenty to play for.

The field will consist of the defending champion - in this case, Ernie Els - and the top-ranked players from Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Australasia and the Africa/Middle East tours. They will be joined by four others from the world rankings, four from the European Tour's Order of Merit and the 2009 Volvo China Open champion.

Volvo has a long association with golf in Europe and has sponsored the season-ending Volvo Masters at Valderrama since 1988. But, with the European Tour reorganising its schedule from 2009 with the Race to Dubai - culminating in the Dubai World Championship - Volvo decided to change tack.

Els, who won the Wentworth event a record seven times, said of the three-year deal: “The World Match Play Championship has meant a huge amount to me and I am delighted to hear the event is going to continue to grow even further in stature.”

Sergio García, meanwhile, was delighted that the tournament had moved to his homeland. “It is fantastic that such a prestigious event as the World Match Play has chosen to move to a Spanish venue,” he said.