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Many of the world's great champions, including the course designer José Maria Olazábal of Spain, will be among the 18 confirmed countries competing in the 2007 Omega Mission Hills World Cup at Mission Hills Golf Club in China from November 22-25.

The Olazábal signature course, which carries the stamp of the 1994 and 1999 Masters Champion, will be the venue for the $5,000,000 event, which sees a total of 28 nations battle it out for the prestigious title and the imposing World Cup Trophy.

Today's 18 countries will be joined by a further ten teams following qualifying competitions in Asia and Latin America from September 27-30. Three Major Champions will tee up in the Omega Mission Hills World Cup along with a host of global winners, with Olazábal confirmed as Spain's Number One along with Retief Goosen of South Africa and Mike Weir of Canada.

Goosen, the two-time US Open Champion, and 2003 Masters Champion Weir, will announce their partners in due course. However Olazábal has selected his close friend, Miguel Angel Jiménez, to represent the Spanish flag. Jiménez came close to World Cup success three years ago when Spain finished runner-up, one shot behind England, over another Olazábal-designed course, Real Club de Golf Sevilla, in his home country.

Goosen has already experienced the thrill of victory in the World Cup when South Africa secured a dramatic play-off victory over Denmark, New Zealand and the United States in Japan in 2001. Goosen and Zhang Lian-wei of host country China are both making a sentimental return to Mission Hills, 12 years after representing their respective countries in the 1995 World Cup. South Africa and China finished eighth and 27th respectively that year and will be determined to secure a higher placing this time around.

Scotland's Colin Montgomerie, the eight-time European Tour Order of Merit winner, will join forces with Marc Warren in an attempt to go one better than last year in Barbados when the same partnership lost out to Germany in a sudden-death play-off.

Justin Rose has invited his close friend, Ian Poulter, to represent England, who were successful in 2004 and prior to that in 1998. Rose, in tandem with Paul Casey, finished second behind South Africa at Kiawah Island in 2004 while Poulter's only previous appearance was at the Taiheiyo Club in Japan in 2001.

The host nation, China, will be represented at the Omega Mission Hills World Cup by the older generation in Zhang -- the first Chinese golfer to win on The European Tour -- and the younger generation in Liang Wen-Chong, the most recent player from China to win on The European Tour earlier this season in Singapore.

The United States will be represented by Arron Oberholser and Sean O'Hair while 2005 winners, Stephen Dodd and Bradley Dredge of Wales, are reunited in a bid to wrest back the trophy.

The 2007 Omega Mission Hills World Cup will launch a new and exciting era in the history of the event first played in 1953 as the Canada Cup. The event is set to continue through 2018, and most probably beyond, at Mission Hills following the signing of an agreement that brought the prestige watch manufacturer Omega together with the Club, which introduced the game of golf to China by first hosting the World Cup in 1995.

John Jay Hopkins, the noted Canadian industrialist, brought to reality a dream that golf could promote goodwill between nations with the inaugural World Cup played in Montreal in 1953 then called the Canada Cup and re-titled The World Cup in 1967.

The International Federation of PGA Tours will, as custodians, oversee the 53rd edition of the event as it unfolds less than one year before the staging in Beijing of the Olympic Games at which Omega has a unique role as Official Timekeeper.