- Tour de las Americas
The Tour de las Américas is the men's
professional golf tour forLatin America .Top level tournament
golf in Latin America has had an unstable history. Some of the national open championships in the region are long established, but they did not traditionally form a coherent tour. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the "Caribbean Tour" attracted entrants from leading European and American golfers such asSeve Ballesteros andCurtis Strange , but it folded after a few years. The next attempt was the "South American Tour" of 1981 to 1999, which was based around the existing national opens of the main Latin American countries. This had limited success in creating a popular and coherent tour, and was mainly notable for the quality of some of the players it exported to thePGA Tour and theEuropean Tour , such asJosé Cóceres andÁngel Cabrera .In 2000 new owners relaunched the tour under the name Tour de las Américas with aim of creating a schedule which would cover the whole region from
Argentina to theCaribbean , and gain wider media exposure. The tour soon introduced a policy of co-sanctioning some events with Europe's second tierChallenge Tour . It also co-operates with theNationwide Tour ; for example some leading Tour de las Americas players are given entries to certain Nationwide Tour events. In 2006 there were twelve events that counted towards the Tour de las Americas Order of Merit, with prize funds ranging fromUS$ 55,000 to US$310,000.If the
Sunshine Tour is deemed to be the main tour for all of Africa,Latin America is the only region of the World which does not have a tour which is a full member of theInternational Federation of PGA Tours , and where the main tour does not offerOfficial World Golf Rankings points. The Tour de las Américas is hoping to be promoted into the World Ranking system in the future.The Tour de las Americas joined the International Federation of PGA Tours under the Associate Membership category on
July 30 ,2007 .Order of Merit winners
2007 Tour Schedule
External links
* [http://www.tourdelasamericas.com/index.php Official website - English version]
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