The Nationwide Tour will not make a stop in Canada in 2011. The PGA development tour has unveiled a 26 event calendar, three fewer than this past season.
Among the tournaments dropped is the Wayne Gretzky Classic, which had been staged the past three years in the Collingwood, Ontario region.
"After providing Canadian fans with a chance to see some of golf's next great ones for three years, we will not be hosting the tournament in 2011," Glen Gretzky, the Executive Director of the Wayne Gretzky Foundation said in a statement. "While we did have support from sponsors despite the economic challenges of recent years, there were just not enough to put on the tournament without exposing the foundation itself to financial risk."
The tour also eliminated its New Zealand-Australia swing, which kicked off the 2010 schedule. This time around, the tour's 22nd season will open February 24th in Panama before travelling to Colombia the following week. The tour arrives back on North American shores in Louisiana in March.
From July through the end of October, the Nationwide Tour will play 15 events in 16 weeks in the run-up to the end of the season.
The final full-field event will once again be played at the home of the PGA Tour, TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. It will set the table for the finale, the Nationwide Tour Championship, where the top 25 leading money winners will be awarded their PGA Tour cards for the 2012 season.