PGA Tour Champions
The PGA Tour Champions is a North American tournament series for professional golfers from the age of 50, which is sponsored by the PGA Tour and holds around 30 tournaments annually.
This senior tour emerged from an extremely successful event in 1978, the Legends of Golf , in which two-man teams made up of famous golfers from bygone days competed against each other. The tournament series was originally called the Senior PGA Tour , then the Champions Tour from 2002 , before being given its current name in 2016. After reaching the required age limit, some of the best professional golfers of all time, such as Arnold Palmer , Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player , as well as a large number of former, multiple majors winners have already played or are active participants like Bernhard Langer . So the name of the tour is justified.
In the 2007 season, all events with the exception of the Senior British Open took place in the USA. The guaranteed prize money totaled US $ 54.1 million, which is around 20% of the prize money paid out in the PGA Tour and roughly as much as that of the Ladies Tour ( LPGA Tour ). An additional tournament was started in the Dominican Republic for 2008, with guaranteed prize money for the 29 events amounting to US $ 55.2 million.
In 2014 there were 26 tournaments with a total prize money of US $ 51.7 million, which were played in addition to two tournaments in Canada and the Senior British Open in the USA.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the 2020 season was interrupted in mid-March. The tournaments scheduled for the following months have been canceled or postponed to a later date. On May 14, 2020, the tour management announced that the tournaments of 2020 and 2021 would be combined into one season. A season rating will therefore only be available again at the end of 2021. Game operations continued with The Ally Challenge at Warwick Hills in Grand Blanc , Michigan on July 31, 2020.
Most tournaments are played over three rounds (54 holes), one round less than in the usual counting competition events by professional golfers. That's why there is usually no cut . The five Senior Major Championships are, however, over four rounds, which gives the strongest players a better chance of winning. Participants are also allowed to use a golf cart in most tournaments , with the exception of senior majors and some other events such as pro-ams. Otherwise, this is strictly prohibited in regular professional tournaments.
Senior Major Championships
- Senior PGA Championship (first 1937; Champions Tour Major since 1980)
- US Senior Open (Champions Tour Major since first edition 1980)
- Senior Players Championship (Champions Tour Major since 1983)
- The Senior Open Championship (first 1987; Champions Tour Major since 2003)
- The Tradition (Champions Tour Major since first edition in 1989)
Money list winners
Web link
- Official website (English)