Malaysia’s Ainil Bakar is all geared up for the 2020 Ladies European Tour (LET) season after earning category 9b membership through the tour’s qualifying school final stage on Sunday.
“With 9b membership, I can get in to the full field events this year. I also have full cards on the LET Access Series and for the China LPGA Tour, but my focus will always be on Europe because the tour’s bigger and offers more world ranking points,” said Ainil, who finished in 56th place in the qualifying school final stage at La Manga in Spain.
“But Asia is where the heart is, so of course I’m still going to play in Asia and hopefully on the PGM Tour as well,” added the 30-year-old.
Ainil turned professional in 2010 and has played mainly in Europe since 2014, winning once on the LET Access Series in the 2016 Ladies Finnish Open.
The 2020 Ladies European Tour features 24 tournaments with a record total prize fund of €18 million, an increase of €4.5 million over 2019. The tour incorporates the season-long Race to Costa del Sol which offers a €250,000 bonus pool to the top three finishers on the order of merit. The season commences with the Australian Ladies Classic Bonville on February 20-23 and concludes with the €600,000 Andalucía Costa del Sol Open de España Femenino in November.
The vastly-improved schedule demonstrates the success of the new LPGA-LET Joint Venture, with a new board of directors chaired by LPGA commissioner Mike Whan. The board includes six directors from the LET (Marta Figueras-Dotti, Eleanor Givens, Catriona Matthew, Liz Young, Justin Abbott and Alastair Ruxton), four from the LPGA (Mike Whan, Liz Moore, Kathy Milthorpe and Mike Nichols), one from The R&A (chief executive Martin Slumbers) and one from the European Tour (chief executive Keith Pelley).
