Celebrating our 20 Years of Raising Golf Stars

It was the year 2001 when the Golf Federations of France, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria first launched a new professional tour. They called it, appropriately, Alps Tour – from the mountain range that stretches across those four countries, from west to east – and its purpose was clearly established since the very beginning: to provide Europe’s best young talented players with the opportunity to build a fundamental professional tournament experience and to use it as a springboard towards higher levels – Challenge Tour, European Tour, and beyond.

In the last twenty years the Alps Tour has been expanding its borders and visiting more countries – Slovenia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Portugal, and – regularly since 2009 – Spain, which quickly became an essential pillar of the organization with its Federation; beyond Europe, the Alps Tour has flown over the Mediterranean Sea to Morocco, Israel, Tunisia, and Egypt cumulating an impressive list of tournaments – and winners.

There have been highs and lows in those twenty seasons, great golfing stars blooming from the rankings and world economic crisis which unforgivingly hit the tournament schedules; but the past year was undoubtedly the most challenging we all had to face. The COVID-19 pandemic was about to destroy all the efforts that had been put in building a successful tour, brick by brick, and therefore deprive many rising golf stars of their future careers. This was not the case, in 2020 the Alps Tour was able to organize a season of tournaments, a final ranking and have three players promoted to the 2021 Challenge Tour.

On the strength of this difficult experience, Alps Tour wants to look at 2021 as a new era capitalizing on the success of the past and celebrating this important anniversary in style with a new tagline – “Raising Golf Stars”, which stresses its role of training ground for future golf stars – and a new logo: an A which represents a stylised peak of a mountain, or the ambition to climb the golf rankings for the players.

“I am extremely proud of the Alps Tour family”, says Alps Tour President Marco Durante, “including directors, staff and players, all together, for their strong response to the COVID-19 crisis. Together we faced, and overcame, an unprecedented situation which forced some difficult – sometimes hard, or bold – decisions, such as postponing with short notice the second Winter series in Egypt or anticipating and moving the Qualifying School to Italy. We had the understanding of the Challenge Tour for keeping at least three spots for our top players next season, despite the “freezing” of their order of merit, and we had the continuous support of our founding Federations, together with sponsors and organizers, to keep the Alps Tour alive and in good health. Especially I must thank Estelle Richard, Alessandro Rogato and Alessandro Pia for their extraordinary efforts throughout the season, and my Board for its unparalleled commitment for the sake of offering playing opportunities to our members”.

“It was also our paramount concern to have a safe environment for our players and staff: and we can now proudly state that all our precautions were successful in keeping all our tournaments Covid-free”.

“The Alps Tour is turning 20 years old: as old, as young, as some of our members. Our commitment continues to be to raise future golf stars: and we are sure that we shall find some more between our players in the new season. All the best to all of you!”

While we need to wait a little more to announce a definitive schedule, this is the link to the first draft of an early provisional schedule of tournaments for the first part of 2021; we plan to organise 16 tournaments overall, with 8 dates in Italy, 3 in France, 2 in Spain, 1 in Austria and 2 in Egypt.

The Alps Tour in numbers since 2001:
€ 15.240.000 prize money distributed;
365 tournaments;
14 countries visited;
152 different venues;
217 different tournament winners

Please click:
here for the full list of Schedules and Winners 2001-2020

here for the alpha list of winners 2001-2020

here for the Top 5 OoM 2001-2020