The Indonesia Open is a comparative late comer to the world of professional golf championships in Southeast Asia. Organized annually by the Indonesia Golf Association, the tournament was one of ten events that took place every year on the Asia Golf Circuit until the late 1990s.

The competition was not played between 1998 and 2004 and a year after it re-appeared it became a co-sanctioned event on both the Asian Tour and the European Tour until 2009. It was then a fixture on the One Asia Tour for a short time before it became part of the Asian Tour.

The first edition of the Indonesia Open took place in 1974 at Deli Golf Club in Medan, Sumatra (on a course which no longer exists) and it was won after a playoff by Filipino professional Ben Arda, who had claimed the prestigious Japan Open title the previous year. Arda represented his country at the World Cup sixteen times between 1956 and 1977 and he won several Asian national Opens during his career.

Gaylord Burrows from America lifted the trophy in 1977 at Jaya Ancol Golf Club in Jakarta (another course that no longer exists) when he beat defending champion Mya Aye from Myanmar at the third hole of a playoff after they’d both tied on even par aggregate scores of 288. Burrows would go on to win the Indian Open two years later at Delhi Golf Club for his second and final career victory in Asia.

Another couple of players from the United States savoured success in the championship early in the 1980s. The first of these was Payne Stewart, who won a four-man playoff at the Pondok Indah Golf Course in Jakarta in 1981, and he was followed two years later by Robert Wrenn, who held off his nearest challenger by four strokes to secure his only win on the Asian tour at Jakarta Golf Club.

The last North American golfer to win the tournament was Gary Webb at Bali National in 1993, when he beat Sweden’s Nicolas Fasth into second place, and he would add the Hong Kong Open to his Asian golfing CV two years down the line. Back in the United States, Webb would pick up a couple of Nike Tour victories in Iowa and Arkansas later in the 1990s.

A few Antipodean golfers have been crowned as champions in the competition down the years, starting in the 1980s with Terry Gale and Wayne Smith. Kiwis Frank Nobilo (1994) and Michael Hendry (2010) both won at Damai Indah Golf Club while Aussies Craig Parry (Jagorawi Golf & Country Club in 1997) and Nick Cullen (Emeralda Golf Club in 2010 ) have also had their names etched on the trophy.

The first win for a European-based golfer didn’t arrive until the 26th edition of the tournament at Emeralda in 2006 when Simon Dyson held off Australian Andrew Buckle by two shots to take his first title on the European Tour. He wasn’t the first English-born winner, though, as Ed Fryatt, who emigrated to the United States with his family as a 4-year-old boy, won the event ten years earlier at Jagorawi.

A year later, Finland’s Mikko Ilonen prevailed by a single shot to win the Open then Pádraig Harrington from Ireland completed a hat-trick of European triumphs with a 2-stoke winning margin over his closest opponent on the Pantai Indah Kapuk course at Damai Indah in 2014.

You’ll not find the courses at either Deli Golf Club or Jaya Ancol Golf Club below as they no longer exist. Also missing are the courses at Jakarta Golf Club, Halim Golf Club and Cengkareng Golf Club as they are currently not included in our Indonesian rankings.