The Asian Tour is the principal men's professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

tour Tour or Tours may refer to: Travel * Tourism, travel for pleasure * Tour of duty, a period of time spent in military service * Campus tour, a journey through a college or university's campus * Guided tour, a journey through a location, directed b ...

in Asia except for Japan, which has its own

Japan Golf Tour The Japan Golf Tour ( ja, 日本ゴルフツアー機構) is a prominent golf tour. It was founded in 1973 and as of 2006 it offers the third-highest annual prize fund out of the regular (that is not for seniors) men's professional tours after th ...

, which is also a full member of the

International Federation of PGA Tours Professional golf tours are the means by which otherwise unconnected professional golf tournaments are organised into a regular schedule. There are separate tours for men and women; most are based in a specific geographical region, although some to ...

. Official money events on the tour count for World Golf Ranking points. The Asian Tour is administered from Singapore. It is controlled by a board with a majority of professional golfers, and a Tournament Players Committee of its player members, supported by an executive team. The chairman of the board is the Indonesian businessman Jimmy Masrin.

History

The Asian PGA was formed in July 1994 at a meeting in Hong Kong attended by PGA representatives from eight countries. The first season of the APGA Omega Tour, as it was known for sponsorship reasons, was played in 1995 and within a few years it had supplanted the existing tour in the region, the

Asia Golf Circuit The Asia Golf Circuit was the principal men's professional golf tour in Southeast Asia from the early 1960s through to the mid-late 1990s. The tour was founded in 1961 as the Far East Circuit. The first series of five tournaments was held in 1962 ...

that was run by the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation, as the leading golf tour in Asia outside of Japan. In 1998 the Asian Tour became the sixth member of the

. Under a new sponsorship deal, between 1999 and 2003 the tour was known as the Davidoff Tour, before adopting its current name in 2004. In 2002, the tour moved its office from Hong Kong to Malaysia and in 2004 the tour was taken over by a new organisation established by the players, who had been in dispute with the previous management. In 2007 it moved to new headquarters on the resort island of

Sentosa Sentosa Island, known mononymously as Sentosa, and formerly ''Pulau Belakang Mati'', is an island located off the southern coast of Singapore's main island. The island is separated from the main island of Singapore by a channel of water, the K ...

in Singapore, which is also the home to what was at that time the tour's richest sole sanctioned tournament, the Singapore Open. In 2009 a rival tour, the

OneAsia Tour The OneAsia Tour was a men's professional golf tour based in the Asia-Pacific region. The tour was founded in 2009 as a joint venture between the PGA Tour of Australasia, the China Golf Association, the Korean Golf Association and the Korean PGA. T ...

, was established. Relations between the two tours are hostile. In 2010, the Asian Tour launched the

Asian Development Tour The Asian Development Tour, founded in 2010, is a professional golf tour. It is the development tour for the Asian Tour, with a relationship analogous to the Web.com Tour to the PGA Tour and the Challenge Tour to the European Tour. Players who fail ...

(ADT) as a developmental circuit. Five events were played the first year. By 2015 the tour had expanded to holding 28 tournaments with US$2.2 million of prize money.

Players

Most of the leading players on the tour are Asian, but players from other parts of the world also participate (as of 2007 the country with most representatives profiled on the tour's official site is Australia). In 2006 the Asian Tour became the most prestigious men's tour on which a woman has made the half-way cut in recent times when

Michelle Wie Michelle Sung Wie West (; born October 11, 1989) is an American professional golfer who plays on the LPGA Tour. At age 10, she became the youngest player to qualify for a USGA amateur championship. Wie also became the youngest winner of the U.S ...

did so at the

SK Telecom Open The SK Telecom Open is an annual professional golf tournament hosted in South Korea and sponsored by the Korean cell phone company SK Telecom. The tournament was inaugurated in June 1997 as "SK Telecom Classic", and renamed in 2001. It is part of ...

in South Korea. Among the ways to obtain an Asian Tour card is to be among the top 35 (including ties) at the Tour's qualifying school, finishing in the top 5 of the

Order of Merit, and placing in the top 60 of the previous season's Order of Merit. The winner of the Asian Tour Order of Merit also receives entry into

The Open Championship The Open Championship, often referred to as The Open or the British Open, is the oldest golf tournament in the world, and one of the most prestigious. Founded in 1860, it was originally held annually at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. Later th ...

Tournaments and prize money

Each year the Asian Tour co-sanctions a number of events with the

European Tour The European Tour (currently known as the DP World Tour for sponsorship reasons), legally the PGA European Tour is the leading men's professional golf tour in Europe. The organisation also operates the European Senior Tour (for players aged fift ...

, with these events offering higher prize funds than most of the other tournaments on the tour as a result. While most of these tournaments have been in Asia, the

Omega European Masters The Omega European Masters is the Swiss stop on professional men's golf's European Tour, and in 2009 it became the first event in Europe to be co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour. Founded as the Swiss Open in 1923, the tournament was prefixed with Eu ...

in Switzerland has been co-sanctioned from 2009 to 2017. In addition, the two tours sometimes tri-sanction events with the

Sunshine Tour The Sunshine Tour is a men's professional golf tour based in Southern and East Africa. For much of its early history it was known either as the South African Tour or Sunshine Circuit; through sponsorship deals, it has also been known as the Vod ...

PGA Tour of Australasia The PGA Tour of Australasia, currently known for sponsorship reasons as the ISPS Handa PGA Tour of Australasia, is a professional golf tour for men, owned and operated by the PGA of Australia. Official events on the tour count for World Golf Ra ...

in those tours' respective regions. The Asian Tour also co-sanctions tournaments with the

. Since 2008, 50 percent of players' earnings from the US Open and

have counted towards the Asian Tour's Order of Merit. The two Opens were singled out from the other majors because they have open qualifying which Asian Tour members may enter. Asia's richest event, the

HSBC Champions The WGC-HSBC Champions was a professional golf tournament, held annually in China. Inaugurated in 2005, the first seven editions were played at the Sheshan Golf Club in Shanghai, then moved to the Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen for a single ...

, was first played in November 2005 with a prize fund of $5 million. The tournament is co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour and the earnings were counted towards the money list for its first three years before it became a

World Golf Championships The World Golf Championships (WGC) are a group of annual professional golf tournaments created by the International Federation of PGA Tours as a means of gathering the best players in the world together more frequently than the pre-existing four ...

event in 2009. From 2009 to present, the earnings are not counted towards the Asian Tour Order of Merit. Another limited-field event in Malaysia, the

CIMB Classic The CIMB Classic was a professional golf tournament in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour and the PGA Tour. Played in the fall, the event debuted in 2010 and moved to the West Course of the TPC Kuala Lumpur in 2013; the first ...

, was launched in 2010 with a $6 million purse. The first Asian Tour event to be co-sanctioned by the US-based

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also k ...

began as an unofficial event on that tour, but it started to offer official money and

FedEx Cup The FedEx Cup is a championship trophy for the PGA Tour. Its introduction marked the first time that men's professional golf had a playoff system. Announced in November 2005, it was first awarded in 2007. Rory McIlroy is the 2022 champion. Th ...

points in 2013. In 2016, the tour's richest sole-sanctioned event was the

Venetian Macao Open The Macau Open is a men's professional golf tournament on the Asian Tour which takes place in Macau. It was founded in 1998. The venue is the Macau Golf and Country Club at Coloane. Past winners including international stars and multiple Europea ...

, with a prize fund of $1.1 million.

By year

The table below summarises the development of the tour since 2004, when the current organisation took control.

Order of Merit winners

Leading career money winners

The table below shows the leading money winners on the Asian Tour as of 16 October 2016. The official site has a top 100 list which also shows each player's winnings for 1995 to 2016.

Notes

References

External links

Official site
{{Men's Professional Golf Tours Professional golf tours Golf in Asia Sports organisations of Singapore 1994 establishments in Hong Kong