Adendorf/Germany – “We are very much looking forward to the final tournament in Adendorf, because the golf course is in excellent condition every year and the perfect terrain to determine the overall winner of the season and the climbers to the Challenge Tour”, Peter Zäh, the Managing Director of the Pro Golf Tour, is enthusiastic. “The combination of a superb resort hotel and an excellent championship course is ideal to bring our tournament season to a fitting close.” The Pro Golf Tour players have been competing for prize money and points at the Castanea Golf Resort since 2012 and the season final has been held on the 6175-metre course since 2015.

Traditionally, at the end of the season, the top five in each of the four satellite tours are promoted to the European Challenge Tour, where they are classified in category 13b and therefore have the opportunity to play an almost complete season on the Challenge Tour. Triple winners are in an even better position in category 13a, but in the 12 tournaments so far in the 2021 season, no Pro Golf Tour player has won three times; the only double winners are Germany’s Nick Bachem and France’s Mathieu Decottignies Lafon, who also hold the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in the current Pro Golf Tour Order of Merit.

As there is no Qualifying School on the European Tour this year due to the coronavirus and players of the Satellite Tours therefore have no possibility to qualify for the European Tour or even for the Challenge Tour, those responsible for the Challenge Tour have decided to give another five players from each Satellite Tour the opportunity to be promoted: the players ranked 6th to 10th in the final 2021 Pro Golf Tour Order of Merit will therefore receive category 20 on the Challenge Tour in the 2022 season.

Challenge Tour rights available

This means that all players who tee off in the 2021 Pro Golf Tour final tournament, which is endowed with 50,000 euros, still have the chance to qualify for the Challenge Tour 2022. The tournament winner, for example, receives 7,800 euros in prize money and the same number of Order of Merit points, while the number 2 is credited with 4,680 points. The current Order of Merit leader is Nick Bachem, but it is unlikely that the 22-year-old will be able to lift the imposing overall winner’s trophy up to the sky above Adendorf on the afternoon of 6 October: the player from Marienburg is suffering from a wrist injury and has not entered the season finale.

The number 2 on the Pro Golf Tour Order of Merit, Frenchman Mathieu Decottignies Lafon, is in Adendorf, and at currently just 123 points behind Bachem, he will push him out of the top spot if he achieves 40th place. Of course, all the top players have set their sights on catching Bachem: rankings 2 to 12 in the Order of Merit will be competing in Adendorf, and at least the top 30 can still hope for category 13b if they win – category 20 is still possible for all of them!

The sporting and mathematical set-up is therefore ready for a tournament that will be exciting right up to the last putt, especially as Mathieu Decottignies Lafon is desperate to claim his third win of the season in addition to the overall victory. The layout of the championship course in Adendorf is being prepared accordingly by the club’s team and tournament director Simon Bowler, including a novelty: hole 10, always designated as a par 5 with 459 metres, will be played as a par 4 this year, which lowers the course standard to 71 strokes, but increases the demand on the best players even more.