Tour de las Américas

The Tour de las Américas (TLA) is the men's professional golf tour for Latin America.

Top level tournament golf in Latin America has had an unstable history. Some of the national open championships in the region are long established, but they did not traditionally form a coherent tour. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Caribbean Tour attracted entrants from leading European and American golfers such as Seve Ballesteros and Curtis Strange, but it folded after a few years. The next attempt was the "South American Tour" of 1981 to 1999, which was based around the existing national opens of the main Latin American countries. This had considerable success in creating a popular and coherent tour over its almost two decades of operations and was notable for the quality of some of the players it exported to the PGA Tour and the European Tour, such as José Cóceres and Ángel Cabrera.

In 2000 new owners relaunched the tour under the name Tour de las Américas with aim of creating a schedule which would cover the whole region from Argentina to the Caribbean, and gain wider media exposure. The tour soon introduced a policy of co-sanctioning some events with Europe's second tier Challenge Tour, and some years later, in 2008, a similar arrangement was agreed with the Canadian Tour. The TLA also co-operates with the Nationwide Tour; whereby some of the leading Tour de las Americas players are given entries to certain Nationwide Tour events.

If the Sunshine Tour is considered to be the main tour for all of Africa, then in the early 21st century Latin America was the only region of the World which did have a professional tour which is a full member of the International Federation of PGA Tours, the Tour de las Americas having joined the federation as an associate member on July 30, 2007. In August 2010 the Governing Board of the Official World Golf Ranking made a provisional announcement that the tour would offer ranking points starting in 2011. The first tournament to receive ranking points was the 2011 Abierto de Chile

2011 schedule

Below is the schedule for the 2011 season.

Dates	Tournament	Host country	Winner	OWGR points	Notes
1–6 Mar	Abierto de Chile	Chile	Benjamín Alvarado	6
7–13 Mar	Abierto Internacional de Golf Copa Antioquia	Colombia	Joaquín Estévez	12	Co-sanctioned with the Challenge Tour
14–20 Mar	Pacific Colombia Tour Barranquilla	Colombia	Cody Slover	6	Co-sanctioned with the Canadian Tour
21–27 Mar	Pacific Colombia Tour Championship	Colombia	Adam Hadwin	6	Co-sanctioned with the Canadian Tour
20–23 Apr	Abierto del Centro	Argentina	Héctor Céspedes	6
18–22 May	TLA Televisa Players Championship	Mexico	Julián Etulain	n/a
23–29 May	Toyota Peru Open	Peru	Benjamín Alvarado	6
7–10 Jul	Abierto de Golf Ciudad de Bucaramanga	Colombia	Alvaro Jose Arizabaleta	6
14–17 Jul	Abierto Internacional de Golf Copa Sura	Colombia	César Costilla	6
6–9 Oct	Aberto do Brasil	Brazil	Óscar Álvarez	6
13–16 Oct	Abierto Internacional de Golf Hacienda Chicureo Copa Claro	Chile	Paulo Pinto	6
27–30 Oct	Abierto del Nordeste	Argentina	Emilio Domínguez	6
3–6 Nov	Carlos Franco Invitational	Paraguay	Fabrizio Zanotti	6
17–20 Nov	Roberto De Vicenzo Classic	Argentina	Nelson Ledesma	6
1–4 Dec	Torneo de Maestros	Argentina	José Cóceres	6
8–11 Dec	Visa Open de Argentina	Argentina	Maximiliano Godoy	6
15–18 Dec	Abierto Sport Frances Copa Nissan	Chile	Francisco Cerda	6

Order of Merit winners

Season	Player	Country	Points	Earnings (US$)
2011	Joaquín Estévez	Argentina	51,970
2010	Julián Etulain	Argentina	56,593
2009	Peter Gustafsson	Sweden	40,934
2008	Estanislao Goya	Argentina		58,104
2007	Miguel Rodríguez	Argentina		60,180
2006	Fabrizio Zanotti	Paraguay		68,790
2005	Daniel Barbetti	Argentina		41,514
2004	Rafael Gómez	Argentina		59,220
2003	Eduardo Argiro	Argentina		48,174
2001–02	Rafael Gómez	Argentina		55,987
2000–01	Angel Romero	Colombia		49,396
South American Tour
1999	Scott Dunlap	United States
1998	Raúl Fretes	Paraguay
1997	Ricardo González	Argentina
1996	Pedro Martínez	Paraguay
1995	Ángel Cabrera	Argentina
1994	Raúl Fretes	Paraguay
1993	Carlos Franco	Paraguay
1992	Eric Woods	United States
1991	Angel Franco	Paraguay

External links

• Official website – English version