Mercedes-Benz Championship (European Tour)
The Mercedes-Benz Championship was a European Tour men's professional golf tournament played in Germany and hosted and promoted by Germany's most successful golfer Bernhard Langer and his brother Erwin.
Founded as the German Masters in 1987, the tournament was originally played in Stuttgart, moving to Berlin in 1994, and since 1998 it has been held played at Golf Club Gut Lärchenhof in Pulheim near Cologne. The prize fund had climbed to €3 million by 2005, making the German Masters was one of the richer events, outside of the major championships and the three individual World Golf Championships, on the European Tour at that time.
After a one year break in 2006 the tournament returned to the European Tour schedule in 2007, renamed as the Mercedes-Benz Championship. Played as a no-cut event, it had a maximum field of 78, consisting primarily of players who had either won tournaments on the European Tour in 2007 or were in the top 75 of the Official World Golf Rankings or in the top 60 of the European Order of Merit. It was played in mid-September, a slot created by the rescheduling of the HSBC World Match Play Championship to October. However, as it clashed with the PGA Tour's Tour Championship, many leading players were unavailable, and so the prize fund on its return had dropped to €2 million, one third less than it was in 2005.
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