The Ballantine's Championship (known as The Championship at Laguna National in its final year) was a
European Tour
The European Tour (currently known as the DP World Tour for sponsorship reasons), legally the PGA European Tour is the leading men's professional golf tour in Europe. The organisation also operates the European Senior Tour (for players aged fi ...
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 which was played from 2008 to 2014. It was the first European Tour event to be staged in
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...
.
From 2008 to 2010, the tournament was played at
Pinx Golf Club on the island of
Jeju. From 2011 to 2013, the tournament was played at Blackstone Golf Club. In 2014, the event has moved to
Laguna National Golf & CC in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
and titled as The Championship at Laguna National.
The tournament was announced in July 2007 by the European Tour in partnership with the Korean PGA, marking a continuation of the European Tour's expansion into Asia. The
Asian Tour
The Asian Tour is the principal men's professional golf tour in Asia except for Japan, which has its own Japan Golf Tour, which is also a full member of the International Federation of PGA Tours. Official money events on the tour count for Wo ...
, which had not been offered the co-sanctioning rights to which it felt it was entitled, responded by calling the event an "invasive" action that "colonised" Asia in "blatant disregard" of the "principles of the
International Federation of PGA Tours
Professional golf tours are the means by which otherwise unconnected professional golf tournaments are organised into a regular schedule. There are separate tours for men and women; most are based in a specific geographical region, although some to ...
", but six months later it agreed terms to co-sanction the event.
The prize fund in the first year was
€
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...
2 million (circa
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 ...
2.9 million).
Winners
See also
*
Korea Open (golf)
*
World Classic Championship
Notes
References
External links
Coverage on European Tour's official siteCoverage on Asian Tour's official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ballantines Championship
Former Asian Tour events
Former European Tour events
Korean Tour events
Golf tournaments in South Korea
Golf tournaments in Singapore
Recurring sporting events established in 2008
Recurring sporting events disestablished in 2014