South Africa will host one of the biggest golf tournaments in the world next year, a $10-million (about R67.2-million) World Golf Championship event that dwarfs any existing event in the country - making it the "most significant thing that's happened to South African golf in its history".

Sunshine Tour commissioner Gareth Tindall announced this yesterday, having returned from the Masters at Augusta earlier in the day. A five-year contract has been signed which will feature the top 70 players in the world rankings. It will run from next year until 2016.

No venue or date has been finalised. Tindall said they "would be looking at doing this in late November, but that still needs to be agreed on by the Federation of PGA Tours".

This could cause a clash with one of South Africa's premier tournaments, the Nedbank Challenge at Sun City.

But the commissioner believes that South Africa can do something a lot bigger and better.

"The opportunity came and we snatched it," he said.

"They [Nedbank Challenge organisers] may work with us, or they might not work against us, but I think Nedbank and Sun International will probably work with us to create something even bigger."

This will be the fifth WGC event, boasting the biggest purse in professional golf.

The other WGC events are the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, the Cadillac Championship in Florida, the Bridgestone Invitational in Ohio, and the HSBC Champions in Shanghai, China. That will make the new addition, to be known as the Tournament of Hope, to build awareness for HIV/Aids and poverty in the world, only the second event outside of the US.

Tindall is supremely confident that all the top players will make the trip to South Africa if there are no schedule clashes. That's why the dates are so important. World Aids day is on December 1, and Tindall said they would like to have the event as close to that as possible.

Tindall also has no doubt that South African golf and local golfers played a big part in the deal being closed.

"I don't think that we've ever had five players in the Presidents Cup side. I think the most we've had is two, possibly three," he said.

"We could potentially have six. It just depends on what happens with the world rankings over the next couple of months.

"Rory Sabbatini is starting to play really well and Trevor Immelman's curve is in the right direction at the moment. He came 15th this week at the Masters and I certainly think he's going to be a force again."

He said South Africa has good stock and good products and the meeting was timed perfectly. The internationals - the golfing world outside of the US - are getting the power back.

Tindall said the Americans created the World Golf Championships but "the internationals now hold the power in world golf, for how long we don't know".

Tindall said they had the support of most of the other world tours already, and if there is a clash with another tournament, the Tournament of Hope will get preference and the other event will have to be moved.

The commissioner will meet Sun International this weekend and he is confident that they can all come to some kind of agreement to accommodate the Nedbank Challenge.

But Tindall made it clear that he had only one objective when he started the negotiations for the WGC event.

"My focus was to do what was best for our country and professional golf in South Africa, and I had to stick with that."