There will be more of a tango and samba beat to future Royal Beach Victoria Open golf tournaments.
The PGA Tour today announced a major reconfiguration of its hemispheric minor-pro system. PGA Tour sa国际传媒 and PGA Tour Latinoamérica will merge into a single entity to form PGA Tour Americas beginning play in 2024.
“This is a very positive thing,” said Keith Dagg, founding director of the Victoria Open, and still a driving force behind the four-decade-old tournament.
“This will make for a bigger and better tournament that feels more like a world event. We’re excited about it.”
This will be the last year of the existing PGA Tour sa国际传媒 and PGA Tour Latinoamérica as they stand now. The final PGA Tour sa国际传媒 season begins June 15-18 at Uplands Golf Club with the 40th Royal Beach Victoria Open presented by the sa国际传媒, with a purse of $200,000.
The new combined PGA Tour Americas will feature 16 tournaments, including the Royal Beach Victoria Open, beginning next year. It will start February through May in South America and Mexico and conclude from June through September in sa国际传媒 and the U.S.
The PGA Tour sa国际传媒 and PGA Tour Latinoamérica currently each offer five spots into the following season’s Korn Ferry Tour, which is the springboard to the PGA Tour. Those slots will be amalgamated with the new PGA Tour Americas offering a combined 10 spots into the following year’s Korn Ferry Tour.
“The golfers will have to play all the way through the new PGA Tour Americas to get enough points to win those berths into the Korn Ferry Tour, which means we will have better golfers overall playing in our Victoria event,” said Dagg.
“Currently, the top PGA Tour Latinoamérica golfers don’t play in the PGA Tour sa国际传媒 if they have already qualified for the Korn Ferry Tour through the Latinoamérica Tour. The new format will make our Victoria tournament even bigger and better and feature more parts of the world.”
In addition to the Korn Ferry Tour cards that will be awarded to the top-10 finishers in the new PGA Tour Americas season standings, there will also be five conditional Korn Ferry Tour cards awarded.
“We are thrilled about PGA Tour Americas and the role this Tour will play in preparing players for the next step in their professional golf journey,” said Alex Baldwin, who oversees PGA Tour Americas and the Korn Ferry Tour, in a statement.
“PGA Tour Americas will be an extremely competitive Tour aimed at identifying, developing and transitioning top-performing players to the next level as they ascend through the ranks and strive to reach the highest level of professional golf, the PGA Tour.”
The former Canadian Tour became the Mackenzie Tour PGA Tour sa国际传媒 in 2013 and 56 PGA Tour sa国际传媒 alumni have advanced to play on the PGA Tour over the past decade with 17 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 51 victories between them.
The Victoria Open has been conducted since 1981 through various pro Tours with the only interruptions being the pandemic-cancelled 2020 tournament and pandemic-truncated 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 Mackenzie Hughes, Corey Conners and Tony Finau. The 2019 Victoria Open champion and runner-up, Paul Barjon and Doc Redman, are both now on the PGA Tour. The 2016 Victoria Open runner-up Taylor Moore won his first PGA Tour event, the Valspar Open, this year.
The Victoria Open has also raised more than $700,000 for Island charities since 2013.
