The 26th Hite Jinro Championship, which ended with Ryu Hae-ran claiming the title, drew unwanted attention for a glaring error on its hole signboards.
The Hite Jinro Championship holds the distinction of being the longest-running single-sponsor event on the KLPGA Tour. Backed by the keen personal interest and support of Hite Jinro Group Chairman Park Moon-deok, a well-known golf enthusiast, the tournament has earned its reputation as the tour's premier major title through consistently top-tier course setups and strong attendance year after year.
That carefully built brand image took a hit, however, from an embarrassing error on the hole signboards erected at the center of the venue. The controversy stems from the peculiar English text printed on the tee-box signs.
On the signboard for the 5th hole, the large numeral "5" is followed directly below by the lowercase text "th/hole." The construction violates the basic rules of both English grammar and typography. The ordinal suffix "-th" carries meaning only when joined to its numeral — as a single unit, "5th."
Splitting the suffix onto a separate line would be bad enough, but appending the noun "hole" after a slash compounds the problem into something with no equivalent anywhere in international sport. A slash conventionally means "or" or "per," so to English-speaking viewers the sign reads either as "5th or hole" or as a meaningless string of symbols. The correct standard forms — used universally — are "5th Hole" or the clean, intuitive "Hole 5."
What makes the matter worse is that this is no one-off printing mistake. Golf fans watching the tournament's broadcast flagged the error to media outlets, which passed the complaint on to the event's organizing agency, at least three years ago — yet nothing was changed. A staff member at the agency reportedly responded that it was too late to fix for that year but promised a correction the following year. Three years on, the same flawed design is still standing on the course. It is a dismissal — through indifference and irresponsibility — of fans who cared enough about the tournament to speak up.
![Park Sung-hyun tees off on the 14th hole. [Photo=KLPGA]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/10/05/news-p.v1.20261005.75aa871dfd7d4566b61db6d17917c5fc_P1.jpg)
The blame does not rest with the agency alone. Hite Jinro Group's own sports marketing team, which bears final responsibility for quality checks, is equally hard to defend. At a flagship major tournament where top management's passion and company-wide investment are on full display, allowing a basic piece of branded infrastructure to go unchecked for three years is a clear dereliction of duty.
The KLPGA Tour itself, as the governing body, also faces scrutiny for its lack of oversight. The tour's broadcasts reach audiences across North America, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and beyond. For a tour that aspires to rank among the world's top three, allowing a sign that breaks elementary English grammar rules to appear in a global broadcast is an international embarrassment.
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details — and the prestige of a major championship is not built on a glittering trophy or prize money alone. True authority comes from the kind of perfectionism that checks every letter and every punctuation mark on a tee-box sign. That three full years passed without a correction, despite ample opportunity, is a damning reflection of the complacency at the heart of Korean golf's event management.
sports@heraldcorp.com
