LPGA brings new Nanea Cup golf tournament to Big Island
Nanea Cup will bring 120 golfers and a $4 million purse to Kailua-Kona in March 2027, but the private-club setting raises familiar questions about who really benefits.
The LPGA has put a new tournament on the Big Island’s calendar: the Nanea Cup will debut March 11-14, 2027 at Nanea Golf Club in Kailua-Kona with a $4 million purse and a field of 120 golfers.
The event is designed as a mixed showcase for women’s golf, with 95 LPGA Tour players joined by 25 collegiate golfers from five programs. Stanford, UCLA, Texas and Arkansas are among the schools publicly tied to the competition, giving the tournament a rare format that puts elite college players on the same stage as LPGA professionals.
For Kailua-Kona, the economic upside is tied less to ticket sales than to the spending that follows a traveling golf event: hotel rooms, restaurant meals, rental cars, caddies, support staff and media all concentrate in a relatively small local market. The LPGA has said the tournament is meant to showcase the present and future of women’s golf in Hawaii, and some coverage has framed it as a way to help fill Hawaii’s PGA Tour void after the state’s long-established men’s events were cut back.
The venue matters as much as the purse. Golfweek described Nanea Golf Club as the No. 1-ranked course in Hawaii and called it an ultra-exclusive setting. That private-club profile limits the chance that residents will treat the event like a community festival; the course is not set up for broad public use, so the clearest benefits are likely to flow to businesses that can capture visitor spending rather than to ordinary access on the grounds.
That tension has defined Hawaii golf tourism for years. Big-money tournaments have repeatedly been sold as economic engines, yet the gains are uneven: local hotels and service providers can see a short-term bump, while neighbors absorb the traffic, logistics and resource pressures that come with moving hundreds of athletes, officials and support personnel into a single destination. The Nanea Cup arrives in that same mold, only with a women’s golf showcase and a college-component twist.
The LPGA announced the event on July 21, and KHON2 News reported the news the next day. By placing a $4 million, sponsor-backed tournament on a private Kailua-Kona course, the tour is betting that the Big Island can benefit from the same visitor draw that has long shaped Hawaii’s golf economy.
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