Bring on the Bossa Nova beat as the Beachlands Victoria Open presented by the sa国际传媒, June 20-23 at the Uplands Golf Course, will be part of the PGA Tour’s major reconfiguration of its hemispheric minor-pro system.
PGA Tour sa国际传媒 and PGA Tour Latinoamérica are merging into a single entity to form PGA Tour Americas, beginning play in 2024. The merger was announced in April with the schedule released Tuesday.
The new combined PGA Tour Americas will feature 16 tournaments, six in Latin America and 10 in North America, the latter beginning with the Beachlands (formerly Royal Beach) Victoria Open. The 16 tournaments will each offer purses of $225,000 US for a total of $3.6-million US.
PGA Tour sa国际传媒 and PGA Tour Latinoamérica previously each offered five spots into the following season’s Korn Ferry Tour, which is the springboard to the PGA Tour. Those berths will be amalgamated with the new PGA Tour Americas offering a combined 10 spots into the following year’s Korn Ferry Tour.
“This will make our tournament, and the tour, bigger, better and stronger,” said Keith Dagg, founding director of the Victoria Open, and still a driving force behind the four-decade-old tournament.
“With the added exposure in six more nations involved, this is a big win for us as the only sa国际传媒 stop, as the golfers will have to play all 16 tournaments if they hope to get one of those 10 spots into the Korn Ferry Tour.”
The 2024 PGA Tour Americas season opens with the Bupa Championship in Tulum, Mexico, from March 21-24 and will move from there to the 69th Brazil Open from April 4-7 at Rio Olympic Golf Course, which hosted the 2016 Olympics tournament. The PGA Tour Americas will travel the spring through May 19 to Santiago del Estero, Argentina, the Diners Club Peru Open at Lima, KIA Open in Quito, Ecuador, and the Inter Rapidisimo Championship in Bogota, Colombia.
The top 60 players at that point from the season Fortinet Cup standings will earn spots into the 10-event North American portion of the Tour, starting in Victoria.
During the four-week break between the Latin American and North American swings, six qualifying tournaments throughout North America will be conducted. One of them will be held at Crown Isle in Courtenay the week before the Beachlands Victoria Open.
The North America portion of the PGA Tour Americas goes from Victoria the following week to the ATB Classic at Northern Bear Golf Course near Edmonton. The Canadian portion of the Tour runs through Aug. 25 at the Explore New Brunswick Open, Quebec Open at Bromont, Commissionaires Ottawa Open, Windsor, Ont., Championship, Saskatchewan Open at Waskesiu Lake and Manitoba Open in Winnipeg.
The Tour then dips below the border to Brainerd, Minnesota, from Aug. 29-Sept. 1 for the CRMC Championship. The top 120 players from the Fortinet Cup season standings will earn spots into the season-concluding Fortinet Cup Championship at TPC Toronto. The top 10 players on the final Fortinet Cup season standings will earn 2025 Korn Ferry Tour memberships and will be one step away from the PGA Tour.
“The foundation we built [on the PGA Tour sa国际传媒] has led to this monumental day,” said Scott Pritchard, the former PGA Tour executive director, who now becomes vice-president of tournament business and sponsorship relations with the new PGA Tour Americas.
“We had great success graduating players to the PGA Tour and this will accelerate the process and help players get to the PGA Tour quicker,” Pritchard told the sa国际传媒.
“We’ve put together something bigger, from Brazil to Victoria, to give players a greater opportunity to play against more world-class talent. Players need that kind of competition to reach the PGA Tour.”
The former Canadian Tour became the PGA Tour sa国际传媒 in 2013 and 65 PGA Tour sa国际传媒 alumni, of all nationalities, have advanced to play on the PGA Tour over the past decade with 26 PGA Tour victories between them. More than 300 PGA Tour sa国际传媒 alumni have gone on to play on the Korn Ferry Tour since 2013 with more than 50 victories between them.
The Victoria Open has been conducted since 1981 through various pro tours and different sponsor names with the only interruptions being the pandemic-cancelled 2020 tournament and pandemic-restricted 2021 tournament. Numerous former Victoria Open players have gone on to the PGA Tour from Steve Stricker, Scott McCarron, Kirk Triplett and Stuart Appleby to Nick Taylor, Mackenzie Hughes, Corey Conners and Tony Finau. The 2023 Victoria Open champion, Etienne Papineau, represented sa国际传媒 at the Pan Am Games this month in Santiago, Chile, and placed fourth.
The Victoria Open has also raised nearly $800,000 for Island charities since 2013.
