The Sunshine Tour is a men's professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

tour based in Southern and

East Africa East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...

. For much of its early history it was known either as the Southern Africa Tour or Sunshine Circuit; through sponsorship deals, it has also been known as the FNB Tour and the Vodacom Tour. For the 2000–01 season the tour rebranded itself as the ''Sunshine Tour'' in an attempt to broaden its appeal. A large majority of the tour events are still staged in South Africa. The tour is one of the six leading men's tours which before 2009 made up the membership of the International Federation of PGA Tours, but it offers much less prize money than some of the leading tours, and leading Southern African golfers traditionally prefer to play on the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also known as the PGA Tour, the PGA Tour Champion ...

or the European Tour if they can qualify to do so, typically returning to play in Sunshine Tour events a couple of times a year. Most of the tour's leading official money events, including the South African Open, are co-sanctioned with the European Tour to attract stronger fields. The 2015 season included 27 official money events. The co-sanctioned events had purses ranging from to , while the other 21 events had purses designated in

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and ranging from 650,000 rand to 4.5 million rand. There was at least one tournament every month of the year except July, but the main events took place in the South African summer from November to February. In accordance with the

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

policy of the governments of Southern Africa, the tour was only open to

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players for its first 20 years. The tour has been open to non-White players since 1991. Five

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golfers have won events: South Africa's John Mashego at the 1991 Bushveld Classic; South Africa's Lindani Ndwandwe at the 2001 Western Cape Classic and 2009 Highveld Classic; Zimbabwe's Tongoona Charamba at the 2006 SAA Pro-Am Invitational and 2008 MTC Namibia PGA Championship; Zambia's Madalitso Muthiya at the 2016 Vodacom Origins of Golf (Wild Coast); and South Africa's Toto Thimba Jr. at the 2019 KCB Karen Masters. In 2016, the Sunshine Tour announced an affiliation with the MENA Golf Tour, allowing the top five MENA Tour players Sunshine Tour cards and those 6th-15th into the final stage of Q School. A number of events would also be co-sanctioned among the Sunshine Tour, MENA Tour, and developmental Big Easy Tour. In May 2022, it was announced that the Order of Merit would be reformatted for the 2022–23 season. It was sponsored by Luno, a cryptocurrency platform. The rankings changed to a points-based system, rather than being decided on money earned. Points earned are based on tournament prize money which are split into five tiers. The leader of the OoM will receive ; paid in

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. Since 2022, the top three players on the Order of Merit at the end of the season earn status to play on the European Tour for the following season.

Schedule

Order of Merit winners

Multiple winners

Awards

Notes

References

External links