Asian Tour

The Asian Golf Tour is the principal men's professional golf tour in Asia except for Japan, which has a separate tour.

The first season in the current lineage was played in 1995, although there had been earlier attempts to create an Asian Tour. The Asian PGA was formed in July 1994 at a meeting in Hong Kong attended by PGA representatives from eight countries - Hong Kong, India, Korea, Myanmar, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore. In 1998 the Asian Tour became the sixth member of the International Federation of PGA Tours. In 2004 the tour was taken over by a new organisation established by the players, who had been in dispute with the previous management. Official events on the tour count for World Golf Ranking points.

Most of the leading players on the tour are Asian, but players from other parts of the world also participate. Each year the Asian Tour co-sanctions a number of events with the PGA European Tour, and these events offer higher prize funds than most of the other tournaments on the tour. In 2005 the total prize fund is 20.215 million U.S. dollars (all purses are fixed in dollars), compared to $12.3 million in 2004. However nine of the ten purses of one million dollars or above are in events co-sanctioned by the European Tour, and European Tour players tend to collect most of the winnings in those tournaments. Prize funds in the Asian Tour's sole-sanctioned events range from $200,000 to $830,000, with the exception of the Singapore Open, which has a $2,000,000 purse.