Seri Pak returns to LPGA in 2024 as tournament host in California

LPGA pioneer Seri Pak will return to the tour in 2024, becoming a member of Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie West as event hosts. The South Korean will host the newly renamed Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship at Palos Verdes Golf Membership in suburban Los Angeles. (Pak, who glided by Se Ri throughout her LPGA profession, is now going by Seri.)

Final yr the Palos Verdes occasion, gained by Ruoning Yin, was known as the DIO Implant LA Open.

The 2024 Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, set for March 21-24, will function a subject of 144 gamers and a handbag of $2 million, up $250,000 from final season.

Pak, 46, retired from the LPGA in 2016 following a profession that remodeled the ladies’s recreation. As an LPGA rookie, Pak gained two majors in 1998, together with the U.S. Ladies’s Open at Blackwolf Run that impressed generations of South Koreans to comply with in her footsteps. She gained 25 instances on the LPGA and amassed 39 titles worldwide.

Seri Pak was the one Korean participant on the LPGA Tour in 1998. When she retired in 2016, there have been greater than 40 Korean LPGA Tour regulars. Pak’s spectacular win within the 1998 U.S. Ladies’s Open impressed many Korean girls to take up golf. (Getty Photos)

When Pak joined the LPGA in 1998, she was the one South Korean on tour. When she retired eight years in the past, 34 South Koreans have been competing full-time on the LPGA, and amongst these, 27 had secured an LPGA win. Pak’s victory didn’t simply encourage South Koreans to pursue the sport, however to dominate it.

“In America, you’ll say it’s Tiger Woods,” main winner Hyo Joo Kim as soon as mentioned. “In Korea, it’s Seri Pak.”

Pak left the sport with $12,583,713 in profession earnings and 123 profession high 10s. She grew to become the primary South Korean inducted into the LPGA Corridor of Fame.

“It’s an honor to return to the LPGA Tour as host for the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship at Palos Verdes Golf Membership,” Pak mentioned in a launch. “Mentoring the subsequent era of golfers and giving again to the sport I like is on the core of all the pieces I do. I’m excited to kick off this new partnership and elevate this event to new heights on the LPGA Tour.”

Fir Hills, a Silicon Valley-based funding agency, has entered a multi-year settlement with the LPGA as a event sponsor.