The Classic Golf Club

The Classic Golf Club is located in Miyawaka City, Fukuoka Prefecture. It takes 7 minutes from the Miyawaka IC of the Kyushu Expressway. Yuzo Tanimizu, the second president of Tanimizu Holdings Co., has built a golf course in a gentle hilly area where used to be the Kaijima coal mine.

Masakazu Suzuki, who was called a master craftsman at that time, was chosen as a designer who could make the best use of this blessed land. To tell the history of The Classic Golf Club, we need to go back to the 1930s. At that time, Seichi Inoue of the East and Osamu Ueda of the West led the early days of golf in Japan. Osamu Ueda graduated from Faculty of Agriculture of Kyoto University and he was invited by Charles Alison to be involved in the development of the Hirono Golf Club (Opened in 1932). After that, he worked as the manager of the club, and then started his activities as a golf course designer. He has many works such as Ono Golf Club, Arima Royal Golf Club, Hiroshima Country Club, Shimonoseki Golf Club, Moji Golf Club and Koga Golf Club. Their unique curvilinear beauty still attracts many players. Following his design philosophy, Masakazu Suzuki has created a lot of leading tournament courses in Japan such as Ibaraki Golf Club, Nukata Golf Club, Mie Hakusan Golf Course, ABC Golf Club and Minagi Golf Club. Their characteristic is also unique curvilinear beauty, and the design philosophy has been inherited by The Classic Golf Club. The course opened in 1990. In September 1995, The Classic Golf Club held “Japan Ladies Professional Golf Championship” which is one of the major tournaments in Japan, and it became a major tournament course. In September 2017, the PGA hosted the “Japan Senior Open Golf Championship” the highest senior tournament in Japan. The course design was revisioned with the guidance of the PGA to make a course suitable for a major tournament. For example, the new bunkers were placed and the trees were cut. Marksaeng got 63 score every day and won all 4 days. It was a remembering fierce birdie rush game. In October 2020, the 53th Japan Women’s Open Golf Championship will be held at this course. This tournament is well-known as the biggest stage in Japan and it is a major tournament sponsored by the Japan Golf Association. Every women professional golfer is yearning to win the title.The past champions are such great players in golf history as Hisako Higuchi, Yuko Moriguchi, Ayako Okamoto, Ai Miyazato and Nasa Hataoka. It is carrying out the course modification and the clubhouse renovation to become the global standard course by 2020.

The King Course is made use of natural beautiful terrain, and the fairways are wide and distance. But the accuracy of teeing shots is required because there are forests on the left and right sides.

In the Queen Course, 5 out of 9 holes have the pond. Not only the teeing shot but also second shot must be careful of the pond. It shows the philosophy of Masakazu Suzuki called the Water Magician.

The Prince Course has the most variety 9 holes. There are doglegs, downhills and the par-3 hole surrounded by a pond from the teeing area to the green. It is quite challenging course.