LPGA’s Lotte Championship expected to return to Ko Olina in 2021

Golf’s Lotte Championship, the LPGA Tour’s only stop in Hawaii and its future up in the air as one of the first major events in the state to be impacted by COVID-19, is expected to return to Ko Olina.

The tournament, which has been held there since 2012 and was won by Michelle Wie in 2014, was scheduled to have taken place in April but was first postponed and then eventually canceled.

With the 2020 event to have marked the final year of a third in a series of three-year agreements, there has been uncertainty about whether Lotte, a South Korea-based multinational conglomerate, would return or take it elsewhere.

“I’m in touch with Lotte and they are definitely planning on next year,” Ray Stosik, President/Managing Director of 141 Premiere Sport, which coordinates the tournament, said Wednesday.

Stosik said Lotte was given a series of options by the LPGA, including pushing the tournament deeper into 2020 or coming back in 2021. Stosik said, ‘I would say the 2020 event will be held in April of 2021.”

An LPGA spokeswoman said, “The Tour looks forward to returning to Hawaii in 2021 for the Lotte Championship. The LPGA and Lotte are in the final stages of positive discussions about future tournaments.”

With a precipitous drop in funding due to the impact of COVID-19 and uncertainty over the event’s return, the Hawaii Tourism Authority did not include the Lotte Championship among its proposed sponsorships in the fiscal year 2021 budget presented to its board of directors but said it would be willing to review the situation.

“When we did our budget we did it based upon what we really feel confident is going to happen rather than what we think (is going to happen) because we have limited funds,” said Chris Tatum, the HTA’s retiring president and CEO.

“With our reduced funding, we don’t have a lot for sporting events. Now, if the TAT starts coming back down the road and we have more money allocated, we’ll have to re-evaluate our budget,” Tatum said.

The HTA is underwritten by the transient accommodations tax. But with the breakout of COVID-19 and the state’s 14-day quarantine, the so-called “hotel tax” has dried up and the HTA has slashed its budget by nearly 50%.

The PGA Tour’s three tournaments — the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua and the Sony Open in Hawaii at Waialae Country Club in January and the Champions Tour’s Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai in February — are listed in the 2021 budget with an overall total of $2.16 million in HTA sponsorship.

Tatum said the PGA and LPGA events, “Represent us well. It is great branding, it is outdoors in the most beautiful place in the world and one of the few places where you can play golf at that time of the year.”