The Challenge Tour, for the fourth consecutive year, kicks off the season in South Africa with the Bain’s Whiskey Cape Town Open (February 2-5), the first of four consecutive events organized in collaboration with the Sunshine Tour and scheduled at Royal Cape Golf Club, in Cape Town.
Six Italian players on the field, almost all with significant experience on the major circuit and able to play a leading role: Renato Paratore, Francesco Laporta, Matteo Manassero, Lorenzo Gagli, Andrea Pavan and Lorenzo Scalise.
Challenge Tour, schedule
The tournament, now in its 11th edition, has entered the second continental tour only in the last three played. Absent the winner of the two previous years, the South African JC Ritchie engaged in the United Arab Emirates, seven past winners will be in the race and among the favourites: the other South Africans Jacques Kruyswijk, Brandon Stone, Jaco Ahlers and Jake Roos, repeatedly engaged in Europe, the Swedish Anton Karlsson, the Welsh Rhys Enoch and Benjamin Follett-Smith of Zimbabwe.
The prize pool is $350,000. The PGA Tour is an organization that curates major professional golf tours in the United States. It is based in Ponte Vedra Beach, a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida. The PGA Tour became its own organization in 1968, when it split from the PGA of America, which is now primarily an association of golf professionals, such as instructors and club managers.
Tournament players first formed their own organization, the Association of Professional Golfers (APG). Later, in 1968, the players abolished the APG and agreed to operate as the PGA “Tournament Players Division”, a fully autonomous division of the PGA, overseen by a new 10-member Tournament Policy Board.
The name then officially changed to “PGA Tour” in 1975. In 1981, it had a marketing dispute with the PGA of America and decided to officially change its name. From the end of August of that year it becomes “TPA Tour”, which stands for “Tournament Players Association” The dispute was resolved within seven months and the name of the tour reverted to being “PGA Tour” in March 1982.
Due to the multiplicity of similar denominations, it is good to explain what the PGA Tour does and does not do. The PGA Tour does not operate any of the major four tournaments or the Ryder Cup. The PGA of America, not the PGA Tour, organizes the PGA Championship, the Senior PGA Championship, and co-organises the Ryder Cup with the PGA European Tour.
The PGA Tour is not involved in the women’s tours of the United States, which are controlled by the LPGA. Furthermore, the PGA Tour is not the official body that regulates the game of golf in the United States: this is instead the role of the USGA, which also organizes the U.S.
open. Instead, what the PGA Tour does is organize all the rest of the golf events week after week, including The Players Championship and the FedEx Cup as well as the biennial Presidents Cup.
