The European Tour announced the early portion of its 2014-15 international schedule on Monday. The early slate includes a pair of new tournaments.
The season will kick off in December with a pair of traditional events in South Africa, the Nedbank Challenge and the Alfred Dunhill Championship.
Once the calendar flips to 2015, the South African Open begins the schedule on January 8. The traditional desert swing with two events in the United Arab Emirates and one in Qatar are next.
The tour heads to Malaysia and Thailand for a pair of events in early February. The Maybank Malaysian Open will be contested two months earlier this year as it had been played in mid-April three of the last four years.
The Thailand event and the following tournament, the Hero Indian Open, are both new events to the Race to Dubai and both are co-sanctioned with the Asian Tour.
A three-week run in South Africa follows that Asian swing. The second of those three events, the Africa Open, will be played opposite the first World Golf Championship of the year, the WGC-Cadillac Championship.
The tour finally shifts to Europe for the Madeira Islands Open before moving back to Africa for the Trophee Hassan II. The Masters, the season's first major, follows those two tournaments.
"The initial part of the 2015 Race to Dubai once again demonstrates the global appeal of the European Tour, with the familiar swings in South Africa and the Desert, allied to a new date for the Maybank Malaysian Open, and the introduction of two new events, in Thailand and India," said Keith Waters, the European Tour's Chief Operating Officer and Director of International Policy.
[SportsNetwork.com]
