Omega China Tour

The Omega China Tour is a men's professional golf tour, intended to encourage the development players who in future may be able to move up to the Asian Tour or other major international tours, and also to help accelerate the development of golf in the People's Republic of China, following the sports reintroduction to the country in the 1980s, having been absent during the early communist era.

Launched by the China Golf Association in 2005, the tour began with four three day tournaments, each with a minimum purse of US$100,000. This increased to six four day tournaments in 2006, and then eight in 2007. It was initially planned to have ten tournaments in 2008, but this was not possible, and there were again eight events.

China has hosted some big money European Tour sanctioned tournaments, but at the launch of the China Golf Tour, the executive vice-president of the China Golf Association Jiang Xiuyun commented, "The future for golf in China – the real, long-term future – is not paying large sums to bring the world’s superstars to play here. It is creating our own stars". ^[1] The Singapore based World Sports Group was granted a five year contract to organise the events.

Order of Merit winners

Year	Winner	Earnings (¥)
2009	Kurt Barnes	264,750
2008	Liao Guiming	375,125
2007	Li Chao	652,125
2006	Zhang Lian-wei	540,000
2005	Li Chao

References

1. ^ A Tour for China's Rising Stars, asianpga.com news article, 2005.

External links

• Official site:
  • Chinese version
  • English version
• cybergolf.com article about the launch of the China Golf Tour
• asianpga.com article about the launch of the China Golf Tour