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 w ...
tour 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 t ...
, 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 ...
. 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 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
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 ...
. 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 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 (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 did so at the
SK Telecom Open 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
Asian Development Tour 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.
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 fi ...
, 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 in Switzerland has been co-sanctioned from 2009 to 2017. In addition, the two tours sometimes tri-sanction events with the
Sunshine Tour or
PGA Tour of Australasia in those tours' respective regions. The Asian Tour also co-sanctions tournaments with the
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 t ...
.
Since 2008, 50 percent of players' earnings from the
US Open and
The Open Championship 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, was launched in 2010 with a $6 million purse. The first Asian Tour event to be co-sanctioned by the US-based
PGA Tour 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. Thi ...
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.
See also
*
List of golfers with most Asian Tour wins
*
Asian Development Tour
*
Ladies Asian Golf Tour
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