The Taiheiyo Masters, titled since 2001 as the for sponsorship reasons, is a professional
golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...
tournament on the
Japan Golf Tour
The Japan Golf Tour ( ja, 日本ゴルフツアー機構) is a prominent golf tour. It was founded in 1973 and as of 2006 it offers the third-highest annual prize fund out of the regular (that is not for seniors) men's professional tours after th ...
. Founded in 1972, it was promoted as the Pacific Masters and for a few years was the richest golf tournament in the world with a prize fund of
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
300,000. It remains one of the richest tournaments in Japan, attracting some of the leading international golfers.
The tournament was played at Sobu Country Club near
Inzai,
Chiba until 1976. Since 1977 it has been contested on Taiheiyo Club's Gotemba Course near
Gotemba
is a city on the southeastern flank of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 88,370 in 36,096 households, and a population density of 450 persons per km². The total area of the city is .
Geography ...
,
Shizuoka
Shizuoka can refer to:
* Shizuoka Prefecture, a Japanese prefecture
* Shizuoka (city), the capital city of Shizuoka Prefecture
* Shizuoka Airport
* Shizuoka Domain, the name from 1868 to 1871 for Sunpu Domain, a predecessor of Shizuoka Prefecture
...
. Its title sponsors are
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and
Visa
Visa most commonly refers to:
*Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company
** Visa Debit card issued by the above company
** Visa Electron, a debit card
** Visa Plus, an interbank network
*Travel visa, a document that allows ...
. Previous names include Taiheiyo Club Masters, Toshiba Taiheiyo Masters, Visa Taiheiyo Club Masters, and Sumitomo Visa Taiheiyo Masters.
The inaugural tournament went into a playoff between America's
Gay Brewer
Gay Robert Brewer Jr. (March 19, 1932 – August 31, 2007) was an American professional golfer who played on the PGA Tour and won the 1967 Masters Tournament.
Life
Brewer was born in Middletown, Ohio, and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. As an amat ...
and Australia's
David Graham. It was a three-hole aggregate playoff, the first ever instituted in a golf tournament. Before that, playoffs were either decided in a full round or sudden death. Brewer won the event.
Tournament hosts
Winners
''Note: Green highlight indicates scoring records''
Sources:
[歴代優勝者 - 2015三井住友VISA太平洋マスターズ]
/ref>Past Champions
/ref>
Notes
References
External links
Coverage on the Japan Golf Tour's official siteOfficial site
{{Japan Golf Tour Events
Japan Golf Tour events
Golf tournaments in Japan
Sport in Shizuoka Prefecture
Gotemba, Shizuoka
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
Recurring sporting events established in 1972
1972 establishments in Japan