New Delhi: The Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) has decided to cut down tournaments while raising the prize money for each event to ensure the golfers’ interests are not hit, its president Kapil Dev said on Monday.
PGTI’s full schedule for 2026 is yet to be finalised. The calendar has only been drawn up till March-end and it features six events, two of them new entrants. The tour is looking at no more than 25 tournaments this year after holding 36 events last year, including eight in NextGen, a developmental tour for emerging players. The main tour offered ₹35 crore in prize money in 2025, up from ₹24 crore in 2024.
The decision is being taken keeping in mind players’ fatigue and recovery. “We received feedback from the players that playing week after week was a bit too much. They need time to rest and recover,” said Kapil.
“In an ideal world, I’d have wanted 40 weeks of golf, but that’s not how it pans out. In India, you can’t play in the monsoon or peak summer, which means the 52-week year is significantly crunched. Cramming it with 35-odd events puts a lot of stress on golfers. Quite a few of them reached out to us saying they need more breaks between tournaments for better recovery. I think 25 weeks of golf should be ideal,” he said.
The minimum prize purse offered by a PGTI event is ₹1 crore, and Kapil is looking to take it to ₹2 crore, “or maybe more”.
“We are cutting down on the tournaments, but we don’t want the players to suffer financially. We’re looking to raise the minimum prize purse to ₹2 crore,” he said. The three events scheduled in February — Chhattisgarh Open in Raipur, DP World Players Championship in New Delhi and DP World Players Championship in Tollygunge — offer a prize money of ₹1.5 crore each.
“We are cutting down on the tournaments, but we don’t want the players to suffer financially. We are looking to raise the minimum prize purse to ₹2 cr,” he said. As of now, the three events scheduled in February — Chhattisgarh Open in Raipur, DP World Players Championship in New Delhi and DP World Players Championship in Tollygunge — offer a prize money of ₹1.5cr each.
Kapil also promised a bigger and better year for Indian golf in terms of international participation. Year 2025 witnessed global golfing stars Bryson DeChambeau, Joaquin Niemann, Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry, and Viktor Hovland compete in India for International Series and the inaugural DP World India Championship, and Kapil indicated there will be no shortage of star power on home ranges this year as well.
“We saw the kind of interest Bryson and Rory generated. Indian golf has taken a big jump, and our boys have gained a lot by sharing the space with some of the game’s best. This year, we’ll have top players from Thailand, Italy, and South Africa, among others. And once the American and English players start competing here consistently, it will do wonders towards growing the game,” he said.
The PGTI has also got logistics behemoth DP World as its title sponsor, a move aimed at, among other things, grassroots development.
“That is one of our focus areas and we are in the process of finalising a few things. We need to pump in a lot of money to take golf to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Where we stand now, even 100 new courses won’t be enough,” Kapil said.
