European PGA Tour Tickets

The European PGA Tour, much more commonly referred to simply as the European Tour, is a professional golf tour for men. Its headquarters are at Wentworth Club in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. It is the primary golf tour in Europe and is second to the U.S. based PGA Tour in worldwide prestige. European PGA players are eligible to win the Order of Merit if they play in at least 11 events.

The European PGA was established by the British based Professional Golfers' Association, but became independent of its parent in 1984. It is completely separate from the U.S. based PGA Tour and the PGA of America. The European based events are nearly all played in Western Europe and the most lucrative of them take place in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain. Only one of the events held in Europe takes place east of the former Iron Curtain.

European PGA Tour Tickets continue.

European PGA Tickets

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European PGA Tickets Continued

The European PGA Tour, as an organisation, plans a development tour called the Challenge Tour, and the European Seniors Tour for over 50s, in addition to running its main tour. The European PGA also conducts the Ryder Cup matches in cooperation with the PGA of America.

In 1998, the European PGA Tour added the three U.S. majors to its official schedule. The leading Europeans had all been competing in them for many years, but now their prize money counted towards the European Tour Order of Merit, which sometimes made a great deal of difference to the end-of-season rankings. The following year the three individual World Golf Championships, also usually played in America, and also offering far more prize money than most European events, were established and added to the European PGA Tour schedule. Since the minimum number of events that a player must play to retain membership of the European PGA Tour has long been eleven, this meant that international players could in theory become members of the tour by playing just four events on it apart from the majors and the World Golf Championships, which all elite players enter in any case.

Players such as Ernie Els and Retief Goosen have taken advantage of this to play the PGA and European PGA Tours concurrently and even Tiger Woods, who has sometimes played nine of the necessary eleven events, once suggested that he might enter the extra four required so that he could win the European Order of Merit, although he is yet to do so.