Canada’s CPKC Women’s Open once again named LPGA Tour’s tournament of year

Nov 16, 2023 | 6:02 AM

NAPLES, Fla. — The CPKC Women’s Open has won the LPGA Tour’s highest tournament honour for the second consecutive year. 

The event, hosted Aug. 24-27 at Vancouver’s Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club, was named the back-to-back winner of tour’s tournament of the Year at the LPGA’s annual year-end tournament awards Wednesday night. 

The tournament also won for best sponsor activation and best volunteer appreciation at the ceremony hosted at Tiburon Golf Club — the site of this week’s CME Group Tour Championship, the final event of the LPGA Tour season. 

American Megan Khang won the 2023 CPKC Women’s Open in a dramatic playoff over former world No. 1 Jin Young Ko. It was her first LPGA Tour win. 

The 2024 LPGA Tour schedule was announced Thursday, with the CPKC Women’s Open set for July 25-28 at Earl Grey Golf Club in Calgary. 

The two-time tournament of the year will see its purse increased for 2024 to US$2.6 million, up from $2.5 million. 

The total prize fund for the 2024 LPGA Tour season will be more than US$118 million, the highest ever in tour history and up a staggering 69 per cent from three years ago. 

The tour will travel to 15 states and 10 countries and will feature three new events in 2024. 

Announced earlier this week, the CME Group Tour Championship — the LPGA Tour’s season finale that features only the top 60 golfers on the yearlong Race to CME Globe — increased its purse from $7 million to $11 million with an impressive $4 million given to the winner. Only one event on the PGA Tour has a first-place prize of higher than $4 million. 

“The money says that they’re valued in what they do as the top 60 players in the world playing here,” said LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan. “And they should be compensated commensurate with that unbelievable world-class talent.” 

The 2024 season will begin Jan. 18 with the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in Orlando, Fla., where Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont. will be the defending champion. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 16, 2023.

Adam Stanley, The Canadian Press