The 2011 European Tour schedule will feature 50 golf tournaments, two more than this year, on 29 courses, with new events in Bahrain, Malaysia and the Italian island of Sicily.

The 2011 tour starts next month in South Africa and ends with the Dubai World Championship next December.

The European Tour said in a statement that from 2012 the schedule will be contained within the calendar year, starting in January and ending in December. The 2010 tour ends on Sunday.

Sicily will host a European Tour event at the Donnafugata Golf Resort in the south of the Italian island and Malaysia will host a second tournament, the Iskandar Johor Open, which has previously only been sanctioned by the Asian Tour.

The 2011 tour starts with four consecutive tournaments in South Africa, immediately followed by four in the Gulf as part of a desert swing. It includes the Volvo Golf Champions event in Bahrain. The Sicilian tournament will be the first to be held in Europe, in late March.

The Scottish Open, traditionally the last event before the British Open, will not be held in the town of Loch Lomond and a course has yet to be found. A new links course near the town of Inverness, Castle Stuart Golf Links, is reported to be favorite to host the event in 2011.

The tour leaves Europe in November and heads to China for the HSBC Champions event in Shanghai, followed by more Asian events in Singapore, Malaysia, China and Hong Kong.