Konica Minolta, title sponsor of the JLPGA Championship, is looking forward to the return of Asia’s best female golfers in next year’s JLPGA Championship Konica Minolta Cup following the successful conclusion of the 54th edition last week.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic might have prevented several of Asia’s best golfers from heading to Japan for the tournament, but the ambition of establishing it as one of the region’s most prestigious women’s golf tournaments remains the same.
Tomoko Katsumura, Konica Minolta’s senior manager of international communications, said: “We have been sponsoring the JLPGA Championship Konica Minolta Cup for the past 25 years since 1997, and we are proud of how this traditional tournament has grown over the years. Like our corporate global expansion plans, we aim to make the JLPGA Championship Konica Minolta Cup the number one women’s golf tournament in Asia.
“It’s a pity we could not invite several of Asia’s top women’s golfers to the tournament due to the challenges posed by Covid-19. But we are hopeful the situation will be better next year, and we can welcome their return.”
Former world number ones Feng Shanshan and Inbee Park were among the international stars who featured in the tournament in 2019. Since then, the JLPGA Championship Konica Minolta Cup has been staged as a domestic event due to the pandemic.
This year’s edition was held at Shizu Hills Country Club in Ibaraki prefecture and offered a lucrative prize purse of ¥ 200,000,000 (approximately US$1.8 million). Japan’s Mone Inami, silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, broke the tournament record with a winning total of 19-under-par 269 to clinch her ninth professional win.
