Gifu Seki Country Club

About the club

The East Course Gifu-Seki Country Club outside Nagoya features two courses, the East and West, both of which were laid out by native architect Osamu Ueda in the 1960s, and both have attracted numerous top tournaments. Thus Isao Aoki won the Japan PGA Championship here in 1973; local favorite Yuko Morigueni won the Japan Women's Open in 1990 (on the West Course); and Shusaku Sugimoto won the 1995 Japan Amateur Championship. Extensive renovations were later undertaken, including the elimination of the double greens (which had been rendered obsolete by the development of year-round grasses), a process that took Taizo Kawata from 2006 to 2007. The refurbished course with its greens of bent grass was longer (just under 6600 meters) and more challenging, as was made clear in the Japan LPGA Championship in 2009 when just a single competitor broke par—and the men's champions will be put to the test as well.