MENA Tour back with Beautiful Thailand Swing

DUBAI: After 25 challenging months and a pair of unavoidable false starts, the MENA Tour is back with a brighter than ever outlook.

The Middle East and North Africa developmental circuit will return to post-pandemic action via a four-event Beautiful Thailand Swing next month with each of the 54-hole, $75,000 tournaments to be co-sanctioned by the Asian Development Tour.

The Laguna Phuket Challenge (May 3-5), Laguna Phuket Cup (May 8-10), Blue Canyon Classic (May 13-15) and Blue Canyon Open will conclude the MENA Tour’s now rejigged 2020 Journey to Jordan season which will eventually span nine events, six countries and more than two years.

Enticing incentives are available to MENA Tour members who tee it up in Phuket, chief among them an invite to one of the Asian Tour’s 10 new marquee $1.5 million The International Series events in 2022.

That potentially life-changing opportunity will be awarded to the overall Journey to Jordan Order of Merit champion at the completion of the Blue Canyon Open, the ninth and final event of the season. The top-10 available OOM players will also earn invites to the next two ADT events, after which the ADT will conduct its own re-ranking — meaning potential promotion to the main Asian Tour. In addition, the top-10 players in the Journey to Jordan rankings will also be exempted to the final stage of Asian Tour Q-School for the 2023 Asian Tour season.

To be headquartered out of Angsana Laguna Phuket and co-hosted by Laguna Golf Phuket and Blue Canyon Country Club, the Beautiful Thailand Swing is the first tangible outcome of the strategic alliance announced by the Asian and MENA tours in December. A full merger of the MENA Tour and ADT is mooted from 2023.

MENA Tour Commissioner David