[Kim Haneul's FunFun Golf]⑪ 'Cars, Beef, Chocolate'

JLPGA Tour: Cars and Watches as 'Standard Prizes'
Beef, Fruit, Rice, Caviar, and Chocolate Also as Bonuses

Today, I want to talk about prizes (副賞).

In the Japan Ladies Professional Golf Association (JLPGA) Tour, prizes are awarded along with the championship. They mainly give luxury cars and high-end watches. When I entered Japan in 2015 and won six times, I received a passenger car. Whenever I got a car, I immediately sold it and used the proceeds for good causes. At the 2017 major Salonpas Cup, I received a winner's prize of 24 million yen (about 230 million KRW) and a Mercedes-Benz worth around 80 million KRW as a prize, and I donated the sale amount to help earthquake victims.

The JLPGA Tour offers more prizes compared to the Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA) Tour. Usually, the title sponsor provides products, and sub-sponsors support cars or watches. When you win, you receive the car keys, local specialties, and round-trip overseas airfare tickets.

The prizes are interesting. If you win in Miyazaki, you get a year's supply of beef. There have been tournaments with fruits, rice, and caviar as prizes. If you top the CAT Ladies, you get a small excavator; winning the Yamaha Ladies Open gets you a motorboat and a grand piano. When I received local specialties, I donated them to neighborhood daycare centers in that area.

There was a tournament I really wanted to win because of the prizes: the Meiji Cup. Meiji is a company that makes chocolate. If you win, you get various kinds of snacks, milk, and chocolate, but unfortunately, I never won. Many JLPGA Tour tournaments do not give a winner's trophy; instead, they send a miniature trophy to your home. The JLPGA Tour, with its diverse winner bonuses, is something I will never forget for life.

A sportainer with 14 wins on both Korean and Japanese tours