PGA Tour of Australasia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Schedule
2 Order of Merit winners
3 External links

The PGA Tour of Australasia is a professional golf tour for men. Official events on the tour count for World Golf Ranking points. The tour was formed in 1973 as the PGA Tour of Australia and adopted its current name in 1991.

Most of the leading players on the tour are Australian, with a smaller domestic contingent from New Zealand, but players from many other countries all over the world also participate. The very best Australasian players devote most of their time to the PGA Tour or the European Tour, typically returning home for two or three events each year or even not at all. Therefore the Australasian Tour is a feeder for the larger tours. Some of the leading events are co-sanctioned by the European Tour in order to encourage higher ranked players to enter and to attract more sponsorship. Players with a background on the tour who have reached the world top 20 since the turn of the Millennium include Steve Elkington and Adam Scott. The leading tournaments on the tour include the Australian Open, the Australian PGA Championship, the Australian Masters and the New Zealand Open.

The PGA Tour of Australasia's development tour is the Von Nida Tour (named after Australian golfer Norman Von Nida) which features around ten events with purses of around one hundred thousand Australian Dollars each. The main tour events take place in the Southern Hemisphere summer, that is late in the calendar year and early in the next one, while the Von Nida Tour events mainly take place in the local spring and autumn. However the money list is calculated for calendar years.

In November 2005 it was reported by the BBC that the tour was going through difficult times, with the schedule for the 2005/06 summer season reduced to six events, three of them co-sponsored by other tours. The Heineken Classic, which was the richest event in Australasia in 2005, has been cancelled in 2006 due to the withdrawal of the sponsor. One factor in the tour's problems is the rise of the nearby Asian Tour. The tour chairman Wayne Grady, and player Mark Hensby both complained that Australia's biggest golf icon Greg Norman, who is a U.S. resident, doesn't do enough to support the tour. Norman dismissed their comments. [1]

[edit] Schedule

The table below shows the 2006 schedule. It only lists official money events on the main tour and Open Championship International Qualifying. For a complete table of events recognised by the PGA Tour of Australasia, including Von Nida Tour events and World Golf Championships see the official site.

Dates	Tournament	State / Country	Prize fund	Notes	Winner
30 Jan - 1 Feb	British Open Championship International Qualifying	Victoria	N/A	Up to four places at The Open Championship available	N/A
9-12 Feb	Johnnie Walker Classic	Western Australia	GBP 1,250,000	Co-sanctioned by the Asian and European Tours	Kevin Stadler
16-19 Feb	Jacob's Creek Open Championship	South Australia	AUD 1,000,000	Co-sanctioned by the Nationwide Tour	Paul Sheehan
23-26 Feb	ING New Zealand PGA Championship	New Zealand	USD 600,000	Co-sanctioned by the Nationwide Tour	Jim Rutledge
9-12 Nov	HSBC Champions Tournament	China	USD 5,000,000	Multi-sanctioned	Yang Yong-eun
16-19 Nov	MFS Australian Open	New South Wales	AUD $1,500,000	-	John Senden
23-26 Nov	MasterCard Masters	Victoria	AUS 1,250,000	Co-sanctioned by the European Tour	Justin Rose
30 Nov - 3 Dec	Blue Chip New Zealand Open	New Zealand	NZ 1,500,000	Co-sanctioned by the European Tour	Nathan Green
7-10 Dec	Cadbury Schweppes Australian PGA Championship	Queensland	AUD 1,200,000	-	Nick O'Hern