The Epson Tour begins its 2015 season on Friday with the Gateway Classic at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Ariz., and finishes up in Daytona Beach, Fla., in late October at the Epson Tour Championship. Here’s a look at the growth of the Epson Tour in a “By The Numbers”:

$2.73 million: The total purse for the 2015 schedule, the largest in Epson Tour history and an increase of 72 percent over the last two years.
5: There are five 2015 events sponsored by Potawatomi Nation tribes with the addition of the Potawatomi Hotel & Casino Classic at Brown Deer Park Golf Course in Milwaukee (the former site of the PGA Tour’s Milwaukee Open). The returning events are in Battle Creek, Mich.; South Bend, Ind.; Harris, Mich.; and Mayetta, Kan. The Potwatomi Cup will award a minimum incentive-based bonus of $50,000 to players that perform best at the five Potawatomi events. The Potawatomi Nation are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River and western Great Lakes region.
7: The number of new tournaments in 2015. Five of the seven events have been announced and two more will be unveiled in the near future. The five announced events are the Tullymore Classic in Canadian Lakes, Mich.; the Potawatomi Hotel & Casino Classic in Milwaukee, Wisc.; the GreatLIFE Sioux Falls Challenge in Sioux Falls, S.D.; the Toyota Danielle Downey Classic in Rochester, N.Y., and the Murphy USA El Dorado Shootout in El Dorado, Ark.
10: The number of 2016 LPGA cards available through the Volvik Race for the Card money list, which begins this week and concludes Oct. 25 at the season-ending Epson Tour Championship in Daytona Beach, Fla.
13: The number of states where 2015 Epson Tour events will be played, in order of the schedule – Arizona, California, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Kansas and Arkansas. There are five tournaments in Florida.
16: The number of new tournaments added to the schedule since 2012. There are also 16 returning tournaments from 2014.
23: The number of Epson Tour events this season, the most in the last 27 years. It is the first season with more than 20 events since 1989.
72: There will be five 72-hole events in 2015, an increase from two in 2014. The Chico’s Patty Berg Memorial, Self Regional Healthcare Foundation Women’s Health Classic, Toyota Danielle Downey Classic, GreatLIFE Sioux Falls Challenge and the Epson Tour Championship will be four-round events and the remainder of the schedule 54-hole tournaments.
$41,381: The 2014 earnings for Mallory Blackwelder, who received the final 2015 LPGA card.

Partner event with seniors
The Chico’s Patty Berg Memorial, scheduled for April 16-19 in Ft. Myers, Fla., will combine a Epson Tour event played concurrently with a Legends Tour event, pairing young Epson Tour players with LPGA Hall of Famers such as Nancy Lopez, Pat Bradley and Beth Daniel. The Epson Tour will play 72 holes and the Legends Tour players 36 holes on the weekend. The tournaments will be held at Cypress Lake Country Club, the home of Patty Berg.
Each group will be playing for a $150,000 purse, the second-largest purse (along with four other events) on the Epson Tour. The Self Regional Healthcare Foundation Classic, scheduled for May 7-10 in Greenwood, S.C., offers the season’s largest purse at $200,000.

Etc.

This week’s first event, the Gateway Classic at Longbow Golf Club, includes Nos. 11-14 on the 2014 Epson Tour money list. No. 11 Veronica Felibert missed her 2015 LPGA card by $940 and No. 12 Lindy Duncan missed by $1,794. … After suffering a left wrist injury in 2014, Vicky Hurst is playing on the Epson Tour this week. … Maude-Aimee Leblanc, one of the game’s longer hitters, will also start the season on the Epson Tour. … One of this week’s sponsor exemptions is 16-year-old high school junior Hannah O’Sullivan, who attends nearby Hamilton High School. She is a two-time Arizona state champion and was a semifinalist in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur. … Through two LPGA events, the best finish among 2014 Epson Tour graduates has been a T21 at the Coates Golf Championship by Yueer Cindy Feng. Min Lee and Wei-Ling Hsu have each made both cuts.

Epson Tour By The Numbers: Moving Up

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