Ladies European Tour announces record schedule
Announced: By the Ladies European Tour, a 27-tournament schedule in 2021 that will take the women’s tour to 19 nations while playing for a record $23 million-plus in prize money. The schedule will start May 13-16 with the €200,000 (about $242,400) South African women’s Open and end Nov. 25-28 with the €600,000 (about $727,000) Andalucia Costa del Sol Spanish Open. Two significant features for the 2021 season will be nine new tournaments and 23 consecutive weeks of competition, including the Aug. 5-8 Olympic Games near Tokyo and the Sept. 4-6 Solheim Cup in Toledo, Ohio. The total amount of prize money on offer for 2021 represents a $7 million increase from 2019 and follows a season decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The news comes 15 months after a joint agreement was announced with the LPGA to promote women’s professional golf in Europe and worldwide. In recent years, the LET has been stricken by an outflow of homegrown talent to the more lucrative LPGA, with players such as Spain’s Carlota Ciganda and England’s Charley Hull, Melissa Reid and Georgia Hall playing primarily in the U.S. Scotland’s Catriona Matthew, who will captain Europe’s Solheim Cup team, has committed to playing LET events to gain insight for her six at-large picks.
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