Johnnie Walker Classic

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The Johnnie Walker Classic is a European Tour golf tournament which is played in the Asia Pacific region. Johnnie Walker is a brand name. and the owners have a long history of tournament sponsorship. They also sponsors the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles which is a European Tour event played in Scotland. Before the present tournament was introduced there was an entirely separate tournament of the same name in Australia, and the two actually overlapped by a year or two, but at the point the current event was called the Johnnie Walker Asian Classic.

In 1989 Johnnie Walker sponsored the Hong Kong Open, and it was decided to establish an additional tournament which it would sponsor on an ongoing basis. This tournament was called the Johnnie Walker Asian Classic, and was first staged in Hong Kong in 1990. Subsequently it became a touring event, essentially used by its sponsor as a marketing exercise in the Asia Pacific region. In 1992 it became the first event to be sanctioned by the European Tour in East Asia (the Dubai Desert Classic was the first in Asia as a whole). In 1993 the word Asian was dropped from the title. In 2005 the tournament was held in China for the first time, as part of the European Tour's push into China, which saw four events held in mainland China and one in Hong Kong in the 2005 season.

In 2005 the event was tri-sanctioned by the Asian, European and Australasian tours and the field comprised 60 European Tour players, 60 Asian Tour players, 28 PGA Tour of Australasia players, and 8 sponsors invitees. The prize fund was £1,250,000. This amount is large by Asian and Australasian Tour standards, but not by European Tour or PGA Tour standards. However the tournament attracts a number of the World's leading players each year by paying them large appearance fees. Nine of the first fourteen editions were won by players who have topped the Official World Golf Rankings at some point in their career (Faldo, Els and Woods twice each; Woosnam, Norman and Couples once each).

[edit] Winners

Season	Winner	Nationality	Location
2006	Kevin Stadler	United States	Australia
2005	Adam Scott	Australia	China
2004	Miguel Angel Jiménez	Spain	Thailand
2003	Ernie Els	South Africa	Australia
2002	Retief Goosen	South Africa	Australia
2001	Tiger Woods	United States	Thailand
2000	Michael Campbell	New Zealand	Taiwan
1999	No tournament
1998	Tiger Woods	United States	Thailand
1997	Ernie Els	South Africa	Australia
1996	Ian Woosnam	Wales	Singapore
1995	Fred Couples	United States	Philippines
1994	Greg Norman	Australia	Thailand
1993	Nick Faldo	England	Singapore
1992	Ian Palmer	South Africa	Thailand
1991	No tournament
1990	Nick Faldo	England	Hong Kong

The years in the table are European Tour seasons rather than calendar years. The season starts late in the previous calendar year, and the Johnnie Walker Classic has sometimes been held at this time of year, for example the "2000" event was held in November 1999. The 2006 tournament was held in February 2006.