List of Professional Golf Mini Tours

Founded in 2004, the Minor League Golf Tour has become one of the preferred tours for players to develop their games to reach the highest level. The tour aims to provide players with a lower-cost option to compete, with payouts awarded to many in the field as opposed to being top heavy. The Minor League Golf Tour site notes that over $15 million has been awarded to over 4,000 competitors since its inception.

Men, women, seniors, and juniors of professional status are eligible as are amateurs with a handicap of 6.0 or less.

Events are played at courses throughout Florida such as PGA National and Abacoa Golf Club. A popular Minor League Golf alumnus is Brooks Koepka.

South Africa has produced some of the biggest names in golf history. Gary Player, Ernie Els, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, Retief Goosen, Branden Grace, and many others have all been a part of the South African success at the professional level. The Big Easy Tour is a direct feeder to the Sunshine Tour and was named after Els when the tour began in 2011.

The tour consists of 10 events in a calendar year including a playoff and final. The average winner’s share for an event is around $1,500 and the tournaments are 54 holes with a cut after the second round. Big Easy Tour events are played at prestigious courses throughout South Africa including Centurion Country Club and Country Club of Johannesburg.

The Challenge Tour is operated by certified PGA and R&A individuals and is made up of a series of 72-hole events with a cut after two rounds of play. This tour is a direct feeder to the DP World Tour, with 20 players graduating from the Challenge Tour to the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) each year.

The GProTour began in 2013 and is a regionally-based tour that serves North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, with occasional tournaments in bordering states. 

The GProTour has a 54-hole format with a 36-hole cut. A season consists of around 20 events with purses in the $65,000- $120,000 range. 

New members to the GProTour will pay $1,349 for a yearly membership. Each event also allows up to three amateurs, where a $275 entry fee will get you into the field.

The Epson Tour is the official development tour for the LPGA Tour. Up until 2021, it was known as the Symetra Tour and has graduated great players who have gone onto the LPGA including Nelly Korda, Stacy Lewis, Christina Kim, and countless others. 

The Epson Tour lowered its entry fee to $450 per event with winner shares hovering around $30,000 for most tournaments.

As a direct line to the LPGA Tour, the Epson Tour fields the best female players in the world who are nearly ready to make the jump to the highest level. Events are held at top-tier courses such as French Lick Resort and Sweetgrass Golf Club.

The Alps Tour is a developmental mini-tour that serves Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Morocco, and Egypt and is a feeder to the Challenge Tour. The Alps Tour season consists of more than a dozen events. The field size is typically in the 120-144 player range. The top-40 players make the cut after two rounds (three rounds total) and the minimum prize money is around $40,000. The 2022 season concludes at the Alps Tour Grand Final and takes place at Modena Golf & Country Club in Italy.

You’ll often hear that a professional golfer “came up through the mini-tours,” but do you really know what that means? Let’s go over a few basics.

Most players competing on mini-tours have the goal to reach the PGA or LPGA Tour. For those players who don’t qualify for tours such as the Korn Ferry Tour, which is the direct feeder into the PGA Tour, they’ll need to play on mini-tours to gain status and win money.

For some players, mini-tour life is short-lived. They win a few events, gain some additional sponsorships, and play their way to the next level. For other players, however, mini-tour golf is the highest level they reach. They play week-to-week and bounce around to different tours based on what they can afford and qualify for.

Almost all of the financial aspects fall on the player. This includes travel, meals, lodging, and entry into the event itself. Considering mini-tour golf often leads players to compete in other countries, it can get expensive. 

Some tours have a yearly membership fee and the competitor is almost always responsible for their costs and their caddie's costs for the week. Oftentimes, mini-tour players seek sponsorship in the early going in order to secure financing for their expenses.

Purses and payouts are strictly determined by the tour and individual event. You can anticipate a winning share of anywhere from $2,000 to $50,000 with low-funded tours obviously paying out less.

Almost all mini-tour formats are stroke play over two or three rounds. If a particular event is a larger, marquee event, the field size is usually larger than normal. Normal mini-tour fields are under 100 players. How an event addresses the cutline, if one exists, is determined by the individual tour or event.

As the game of golf continues to grow, the number of tours and organizations offering players the opportunity to compete grows. If you aspire to be a professional player on the PGA or LPGA Tour, mini-tours are great places to begin your journey.