Chinese golfers get set for historic face-off
New-look Mitsubishi Electric Automation Women's Open offers rare chance to compete against top Japanese players
The staging of this week's Mitsubishi Electric Automation Women's Open marks a historic moment in Chinese golf, as it will be the first time that players on the CLPG Tour will tee off against their JLPGA counterparts.
The new look, 25 million yen ($168,200) tournament, taking place from March 20-22 at Suzhou Taihu International Golf Club, Jiangsu province, features a top field of 45 players from each tour, 18 sponsor invites and a winner's purse of 4.5 million yen.
China great Feng Shanshan, the former world No 1 who won seven times in Japan during her illustrious career, said that, with many Japanese among the world's best right now, this is an ideal opportunity for domestic golfers to learn from them in a high-level competitive environment and to see where their game needs to be in order to compete at an international level.
"At the same time, this tournament also lets the players from Japan see that we actually have a lot of good players in China, and that there is a very good Chinese tour," said Feng, the bronze medal winner at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
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