Hana Financial Group wins KPGA tournament of sponsors

Ham Jeong-woo [NEWS1]

Hana Financial Group defended their title as the winners of the KPGA Young Society the Final on Sunday with the trio of Ham Jeong-woo, Seungsu Han and Park Eun-shin shining in the field.

The one-round event at Cypress Golf & Resort in Jeju was held after the last official tournament of the 2023 KPGA season, which ended Nov. 12.

Young Society the Final was a competition between corporate sponsors with KPGA golfers representing them on the green.This year is the second time that the tournament has run.

A total of 29 golfers competing for 12 sponsors including Hana Financial Group, Woori Financial Group and CJ competed in the event.

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CJ entered the tournament as No. 1, with Hana Financial Group coming in second.

The tournament took place with a stableford format — a scoring system used in golf that involves scoring points based on the number of strokes taken at each hole.

Unlike stroke play, where the aim is to have the lowest score, the golfer with the highest score wins the event — not by taking the most strokes, but by gaining set points for different scores. The tournament had a modified stableford system where an albatross equaled eight points, an eagle five, a birdie two, a par zero, a bogey minus one and a double bogey minus three.

The Hana Financial Group trio — Ham, Han and Park — played six holes each. The trio scored 29 points across 18 holes, tying with CJ represented by Lee Jae-kyeong and Jung Chan-min, forcing a playoff on the par-4 18th.

Lee earned a par, while Ham made a birdie to claim Hana Financial Group’s second-consecutive victory at Young Society the Final.

“We were able to win as three of us managed our parts well,” the trio said after the final hole. “It is a victory that we earned as one team. We are delighted that we were able to win following last year’s victory. We will work to win this tournament in 2024 too.”

Park was named the MVP of the tournament after making three birdies on six holes. For Ham, Sunday’s win was another reason to rejoice after winning this year's Genesis Point Award.

The Genesis Point Award is given to the golfer with the most amount of Genesis points at the end of the season — the higher finish a golfer manages in a KPGA event, the more points he earns. Ham bagged 11 top-10 finishes during the 2023 season and secured one title at the Hyundai Insurance KJ Choi Invitation in October.

BY PAIK JI-HWAN [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]