After a two-year break, the LPGA will return to Hawaii and Ko Olina Golf Club in April. The LPGA Lotte Championship, Presented by J Golf, was announced a month ago. Over the weekend, final contracts were signed confirming Ko Olina as the site.

The inaugural tournament is April 18-21, with a $1.7 million purse. The full-field (144 players), 72-hole event will finish on Saturday, so the final round can be broadcast live in Asia, where it will be Sunday.

Lotte is an industrial conglomerate in Korea and Japan. J Golf is the LPGA’s television rights holder in Korea. The Golf Channel will televise the event. The LPGA has a three-year agreement with Lotte.

Ko Olina now has to stage a tournament on a little more than two months notice. Lotte has brought in 141 Premier Sports & Entertainment, which handles the Sony Open in Hawaii, and a Korean counterpart to organize and market the event.

Ko Olina’s tournament history is also on its side.

“We have a great volunteer core that’s previously done tournaments,” said Ko Olina director of golf Greg Nichols. “They had their first meeting (Monday). On their own, they were coming out to see where to rope and stake.

“Having said that, it’s going to be fast and furious. Normally you do this in nine months or a year, so this is very compressed.”

The LPGA has a long history in Hawaii, beginning in 1982 with the Women’s Kemper Open. It was played on Maui and Kauai for 11 years. That tournament was joined by the Hawaiian Ladies Open on Oahu in 1987, giving Hawaii two LPGA tournaments for six years. Former Rainbow Wahine Cindy Rarick won the inaugural event at Turtle Bay. The tournament moved to Ko Olina and Kapolei through 2001.

A match-play event at Princeville gave Hawaii three events in 1990, ’91 and ’92 and Kona Country Club and Waikoloa hosted full-field events in the early 2000s. After a one-year LPGA hiatus in 2004, Turtle Bay returned with the SBS Open from 2005 to ’09. It was joined by the Fields Open at Ko Olina four of those years and the Kapalua LPGA Classic gave Hawaii three events again in 2008.

For the past two years there have been no LPGA events here. The organization’s schedule had just seven full-field, nonmajor domestic events last year.

This year, LPGA commissioner Michael Whan has announced a schedule with four new North American tournaments and the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open in Melbourne, which opens the season this week. Hawaii’s Michelle Wie, Stephanie Kono and Ayaka Kaneko are all playing, with Kono and Kaneko making their LPGA debuts.

The LPGA’s total purse this year is up almost $7 million, to $47 million. All five new events have fields of 100-plus players.