By Mark Lamport-Stokes

This year's World Cup, to be played at Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, China, will lose its association with the World Golf Championships (WGC), officials said on Monday.

The two-man team competition, which began as the Canada Cup in 1953, had been a WGC event since 2000 when Americans Tiger Woods and David Duval triumphed in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Under a 12-year contract with a new title sponsor, the World Cup will be staged at Mission Hills Golf Club every year until 2018.

"The event, although sanctioned by the International Federation of PGA Tours, will not fall under the umbrella of the World Golf Championships," the federation said in a statement.

Consequently, the remaining three WGC tournaments this year will all be held in the United States.

The WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship takes place in Arizona from February 21-25, the WGC-CA Championship in Miami from March 22-25 and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio from August 2-5.

Last September, U.S. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and European Tour chief executive George O'Grady said the WGC-World Cup would be played at Mission Hills for the next two years.

The venue would then host a WGC event every subsequent year until 2018, they added.

In Monday's announcement, the International Federation of PGA Tours said Mission Hills would "host the Omega Mission Hills World Cup through to the year 2018".

In recent years, the WGC-World Cup has failed to attract the game's best players.

World number one Woods has not played since 2001 and other notable absentees from last December's edition in Barbados included Americans Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk and South Africans Ernie Els and Retief Goosen.

This year's event will be played from November 22-25 on the Jose Maria Olazabal-designed Olazabal Course at Mission Hills where Germany will defend their title.

Tour veteran Bernhard Langer and Marcel Siem beat Scotland duo Colin Montgomerie and Marc Warren in a playoff for last year's title at the Sandy Lane Resort.