![\"Tiger](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/39606.jpg\" "\\"AT&T")
Tiger Woods has signed a lucrative deal to appear in the World Golf Finals in Turkey as part of a sponsorship deal with Turkish Airlines.<\/p>\n
As part of a three-year commitment to the new matchplay event – which debuts nine days after the Ryder Cup – it is believed Woods has built an appealing “relationship” with the country’s national airline.<\/p>\n
Plans are in place for the event to offer “the richest first prize in golf” – reported to be in the region of $2.5 million – by next year, while this year’s winner will walk away with a cheque for $1.5m.<\/p>\n
A host of top-name players are set to join Woods on the Antalya coast, with Rory McIlroy, world No. 1 Luke Donald and Lee Westwood among the strong field.<\/p>\n
Somewhat predictably, the unauthorised $5.3m event has not been received well by the tours, although Chubby Chandler – the ISM chief executive who is leading the project – has acted to get them on side.<\/p>\n
With the event being played from Tuesday to Friday, the weekend coverage of the Portuguese Masters and the Frys.Com Open will not be put in the shade. Additionally, a Turkish Open will be added to the European Tour calendar in April.<\/p>\n
Turkey are among the nations bidding to host the 2020 Olympics and, with golf being reintroduced at the 2016 Games, having Woods on board could prove beneficial.<\/p>\n
Woods, who overtook Jack Nicklaus into second place on the all-time list of PGA Tour wins with his 74th triumph at the AT&T National last weekend, tees it up at the Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia on Thursday as he fine-tunes his preparations for the Open Championship.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 ESPN EMEA Ltd<\/p>\n
via Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood sign up for new $5.3m Turkey event World Gol | Golf News | ESPN.co.uk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESPN staff July 3, 2012 \u00ab Van Commenee expects ‘heap of appeals’ | Martinez: Iniesta would never have made it in England \u00bb Tiger Woods has signed a lucrative deal to appear in the World Golf Finals in Turkey as part of a sponsorship deal with Turkish Airlines. As part of a three-year commitment to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":54557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3996],"tags":[5634,5619,8235],"class_list":["post-54555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","tag-2020-olympics","tag-golf","tag-woods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}