Current season, competition or edition: 2025 Japan Golf Tour | |
| Formerly | iiyama Tour PGA of Japan Tour |
|---|---|
| Sport | Golf |
| Founded | 1973 |
| Founder | PGA of Japan |
| First season | 1973 |
| Director | Isao Aoki |
| Countries | Based in Japan[a] |
| Most titles | Money list titles: Masashi Ozaki (12)Tournament wins:  Masashi Ozaki (94) |
| Related competitions | Japan Challenge Tour |
| Official website | https://www.jgto.org/en |
TheJapan Golf Tour (Japanese:日本ゴルフツアー機構) is a prominentprofessional golf tour. It was founded in 1973 and as of 2006, it offered the third-highest annual prize fund out of the regular (that is not for seniors) men's professional tours after thePGA Tour and theEuropean Tour. However, since the early 1990s, the growth in prize money has not kept pace with that on the two larger tours. Official events on the Japan Golf Tour count forOfficial World Golf Ranking points and success on the tour can also qualify members to play in themajors.
Most of the leading players on the tour are Japanese, but players from many other countries also participate. The tour is currently run by theJapan Golf Tour Organization (JGTO), which was established in 1999 to separate the tour from the PGA of Japan.[1] The JGTO also organises a developmental tour called theJapan Challenge Tour.
Masashi Ozaki has been the dominant player on tour, leading thecareer wins list with 94, the career money list with over¥2 billion and winning the money title twelve times between 1973 and 1998.[2]
Entry toThe Open Championship is given to Order of Merit winner and runner-up,Japan Open Golf Championship winner, two players not already exempt from the money list up to theJapan Golf Tour Championship and the top four non-exempt players from theMizuno Open.
In 2000, the tour signed a title sponsorship agreement withIiyama, being renamed as theiiyama Tour. The agreement was reported to be worth¥1,500,000,000 over three years.[3]
In 2008, the tour ventured outside of Japan for the first time, co-sanctioning thePine Valley Beijing Open in China, alongside theAsian Tour.[4] In 2013, the tour also co-sanctioned two events at the beginning of the year in Thailand and Indonesia with theOneAsia Tour.[5][6]
In December 2022, a new agreement involving the JGTO,PGA Tour andEuropean Tour was announced. As part of the deal, from 2023 onwards the top three on the Japan Golf Tour's season-ending money list earned status to play on the European Tour for the following season.[7][8]
The table shows the top ten career money leaders on the Japan Golf Tour through the 2021 season. The figures shown include money won in the four globalmajor championships from 1998 onwards and in the individualWorld Golf Championships from 1999 to 2009.
| Position | Player | Prize money (¥) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Masashi Ozaki | 2,688,836,653 |
| 2 | Shingo Katayama | 2,252,278,502 |
| 3 | Tsuneyuki Nakajima | 1,664,953,541 |
| 4 | Toru Taniguchi | 1,662,207,219 |
| 5 | Naomichi Ozaki | 1,545,609,713 |
| 6 | Hiroyuki Fujita | 1,533,257,797 |
| 7 | Yuta Ikeda | 1,269,641,069 |
| 8 | Hideto Tanihara | 1,192,142,233 |
| 9 | Katsumasa Miyamoto | 1,166,981,591 |
| 10 |  Brendan Jones | 1,094,192,410 |
Japan Golf Tour's website has a full listhere.
