Bae Sang-moon aims to win first Korea Championship

A DP World Tour (formerly, European Tour) tournament will be held in South Korea for the first time in 10 years. The newly established Korea Championship, jointly hosted by the KPGA Korean Tour and the DP World Tour, will be held on the urban links course of the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea in Incheon for four days starting on Thursday.

This is the first time since the Valentine’s Championship held from 2008 to 2013 that the Korean Tour and the DP World Tour jointly hold a tournament in South Korea. The tournament’s total prize money is two million dollars, including 0.34 million dollars for the winner. The winner will receive a two-year seed for the Korean Tour and the DP World Tour.

The tournament will be attended by 156 golfers – the top 95 golfers of the DP World Tour on a seed basis, the top 57 golfers of the Korean Tour, and four recommended players. Sixty South Korean golfers will participate, with Wang Jeong-hun being the only one with a DP World Tour seed. “I am excited to show my play to South Korean fans. I told other DP World Tour players, ‘welcome to Korea.’ I hope the tournament will be good memories of the country to them,” said Wang, who won three tournaments of the DP World Tour.

Bae Sang-moon will aim to win the first Korea Championship as a recommended player. It has been 19 months since Bae, who has a record of nine Korean Tour wins, three JTGO wins, and two PGA Tour wins, last competed in a South Korean tournament for the Shinhan Donghae Open in September 2021. Bae won the Shinhan Donghae Open for two consecutive years, in 2013 and 2014, when the tournaments were held on the urban links course of the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea.


Hong-Gu Kang windup@donga.com