A golfer needs to play a minimum of eight pro-am events, including those on the Charles Tour.
Remarkably Holloway only won one event, the Craig Investments Partners Pin High Wanganui Pro-Am at the Belmont Links, in early September.
His secret? Simply mapping a path of consistency.
"I finished in the top 10 in all bar a couple of events so I was always there or thereabouts," says the affable bloke who won the order of merit in 2007.
Jim Cusdin, playing a minimum eight events and 20 rounds this year, was runner-up on 17,717 points while Josh Geary came in third on 17,566 points on the platform of one more event and round.
Kieran Muir, Troy Ropiha, Mark Brown, Peter Lee, Jared Pender, Daniel Pearce and Shaun Jones round off the top 10 in the field of 46.
Bay professional Pieter Zwart, of Waipukurau, finished in 25th place on 7038 points.
The victory, apart from the cash bonus from the sponsors, offers Holloway a passport to playing rights on about 70 per cent of the Australian Tour card events.
"If I play well there I'll earn the right to go to other events," he says, bracing himself for six events in the first half of next year with the mind set of finishing in the top 20 to give himself a chance at the other 30 per cent of pro-ams.
Holloway has established himself across the ditch where he was the Queensland Rookie of the Year in 2006.
"I've always played reasonably well and have a good record in Australia."
He considers himself "an old fellow" in the code since making his debut in 2005.
A decade later, Holloway has racked up eight New Zealand Open appearances and will have a "walk-up" start at the NZPGA in Auckland in March before teeing up on the fourth week of the same month in the NZ Open.
However, tampering that schedule is the unrivalled excitement of the Holloways becoming first-time parents with Rebecca expecting a baby boy in the middle of February.
"It'll change things a little bit, but it'll be exciting times, so when I do play it'll be in bigger events," he says, bracketing 8-10 in Australia and "as many as I can in New Zealand".
Parents Sonya and Lloyd Holloway are fulltime farmers at Waitara Station with Doug's sister, Angela, also living and working with them.
Hastings PGA professional Brian Doyle, who coaches Holloway, says his talent was always a given.
"He's been quite successful without taking that last little step to the absolute elite level," says Doyle of the former top Bay amateur.
"It's hard to know why some guys do [go to the absolute elite level] and others don't so it probably comes down to a little bit of luck."
Doyle says there's no doubt Holloway is one of the best golfers to come out of New Zealand and also someone who stamped his class during his amateur days, too.
