2006 European Tour
The 2006 European Tour was the 35th golf season since the European Tour officially began in 1972. The 2006 season consisted of 47 official money events, equalling the record set the previous year. This included seven major championships and World Golf Championships, which are also sanctioned by the PGA Tour. 27 events took place in Europe, 12 in Asia, five in the United States, two in South Africa and one in Australia. There were two new tournaments, the HSBC Champions in China and the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship, and the BA-CA Golf Open returned to the schedule for the first time since 1996. Total prize money exceeded €117 million, including nearly €40 million in the four major championships and three individual World Golf Championships events. The Order of Merit race came down to the last few shots of the final tournament, and was won by Pádraig Harrington for the first time. He was the first Irishman to top the Order of Merit since the formal beginning of the tour. The Player of the Year award was given to Order of Merit runner up Paul Casey of England and the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year was Marc Warren of Scotland.
Main tournaments
For details of what happened in the main tournaments of 2006, including the major championships and the World Golf Championships, see 2006 in golf.
Table of results
The first five events actually took place in late 2005. The numbers in brackets after the winners' names show the number of career wins they had on the European Tour up to and including that event. This is only shown for members of the European Tour. To give such a number for non-members would misrepresent the amount of time some international golfers spend on the European Tour; as the Tour co-sanctions the major championships and World Golf Championships events, some top players accumulate a significant number of wins in European Tour sanctioned events without really playing on it.
Order of Merit
In 2006, the European Tour's money list was known as the "Order of Merit". It was calculated in euro, although around half of the events had prize funds which were fixed in other currencies, mostly either British pounds or U.S. dollars. In these instances the amounts were converted into euro at the exchange rate for the week that the tournament was played. The top 10 golfers in 2006 were:
| Position | Player | Country | Prize money (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Pádraig Harrington |  Ireland |
2,489,337 |
| 2. | Paul Casey |  England |
2,454,084 |
| 3. | David Howell | England |
2,321,116 |
| 4. | Robert Karlsson |  Sweden |
2,044,936 |
| 5. | Ernie Els |  South Africa |
1,716,208 |
| 6. | Henrik Stenson | Sweden |
1,709,359 |
| 7. | Luke Donald | England |
1,658,060 |
| 8. | Ian Poulter | England |
1,589,070 |
| 9. | Colin Montgomerie |  Scotland |
1,534,748 |
| 10. | Johan Edfors | Sweden |
1,505,583 |
