Every Tuesday evening for as long as most of Ocean Pointe has lived there, six or seven outrigger canoes have slid off the beach at Hoakalei Hale Club and out onto Wai Kai Lagoon. The paddlers belong to the Ewa Puʻuloa Outrigger Canoe Club, a nonprofit that has run practice on this water since it was founded in January 1998, back when the surrounding streets were still cane fields. This week that same lagoon sits a few hundred yards from a golf course that just spent several days building grandstands for one of the biggest sporting events Ewa Beach hosts all year, and the canoe club's Tuesday practice is still happening exactly as scheduled.
That's worth sitting with for a second, because it says something about how this neighborhood actually works. The LOTTE Championship, the LPGA Tour's only stop in Hawaii, returns to Hoakalei Country Club for competitive rounds October 1 through October 4, with practice rounds and tournament week activity opening September 28. Anyone can walk up, buy a ticket, and stand inside the ropes for one of the tour's deepest fields of the year. The lagoon a few hundred yards away is the canoe club's practice water, and entry to Wai Kai Lagoon, Ocean Pointe, and Puʻuloa Beach Park is arranged through the club, by invitation or with approval from Ewa Puʻuloa staff. Tournament week brings thousands of visitors to the course, while the club goes on with its regular paddling season on the water beside it.
What Actually Changes on Keoneula Blvd
If you live inside Hoakalei or Ocean Pointe, tournament week turns the makai side lot on Keoneula Blvd, just past the guard house, into free public parking, something that isn't true the other fifty-one weeks of the year. Everyone else pays: $25 for a single day, $75 for a full week pass, sold at an admissions tent in that same lot. Kids 16 and under get in free with a paying adult, and military members and their dependents get in free with an ID, no ticket required.
The tournament's own rules for that week are worth knowing before you go. Phones have to stay on silent and flash is off limits, but photos and video are fine for personal use, no commercial posting and no live shot-by-shot streaming. Phone calls are restricted to designated areas. None of it requires advance planning. You can decide on a Saturday morning that you want to watch a professional sporting event and be inside the ropes by lunch, which is not something most of this side of the island can say about much else.
That kind of walk-up access exists here because the golf course, unlike the lagoon, was built from day one to host outside visitors. It usually does that thirty or forty at a time in a foursome. This week it's doing it by the thousands.
A Course Built for This, Not Around It
Hoakalei Country Club opened in 2009, an Ernie Els design that plays as a par 72 across 6,530 yards. The yardage isn't the number that matters most. More than 110 bunkers are scattered across nearly every hole, and water hazards come into play on 13 of the 18. The fairways are wide, with generous landing areas that invite players to take driver off the tee, but the Seashore Paspalum greens are mid-sized and tightly guarded, built to reward precise position rather than raw distance and to punish anything short-sided into deep sand.
None of that is scenery. It's the reason this course has hosted an LPGA-caliber field since 2022, and it's the reason last year's finish held up under real pressure. In 2025, 22-year-old Youmin Hwang, playing on a sponsor exemption, birdied her final four holes and closed with a 5-under 67 to finish at 17-under 271, edging 2022 champion Hyo Joo Kim by a single stroke. Japan's Minami Katsu finished third at 15-under, and world number 2 Nelly Korda tied for fourth. A course with that many bunkers doesn't produce a finish like that by accident. It produces it because the back nine rarely gives anyone a comfortable two-shot cushion.
Why the Calendar Keeps Moving
Tournament week hasn't landed on the same weekend two years running, and there's a reason for that. The LOTTE Championship has been played every year since its 2012 debut, but it ran in April through 2023, shifted to November in 2024, and moved again to October last year, where it's staying for a second consecutive season in 2026. The scheduling has historically bent around broadcast windows in South Korea, home to tournament sponsor Lotte, which is why the event ran Wednesday through Saturday for years instead of the Thursday through Sunday format most tour stops use. This year marks the first time it's followed that traditional format. The date isn't fixed to a season the way school calendars or holidays are. It moves when the broadcast math changes, and it has moved more than once in the last few years.
The Lagoon Keeps Its Own Schedule
None of that calendar shuffling touches the water on the other side of the resort. Ewa Puʻuloa Outrigger Canoe Club, a member of the Oahu Hawaiian Canoe Racing Association and a registered nonprofit, still runs out of Hoakalei Hale Club on its own season schedule, tournament week or not. That schedule runs independent of whatever is happening at the golf course a few hundred yards away, and the club's arrangement for lagoon access stays the same this week as it is the rest of the year.
Tournament week and canoe season share the same stretch of Ewa Beach right now. The golf course, built in 2009 to host outside play, opens to visitors for a handful of days for the price of a $25 ticket and a spot in a parking lot. The lagoon carries on with the Ewa Puʻuloa Outrigger Canoe Club, which has paddled there since 1998, on the same schedule as ever, while the LPGA plays on through Sunday, October 4.
If tournament week has you noticing this corner of Ewa Beach in a way you haven't before, whether it's the parking lot turned grandstand or the canoe club still paddling next door, Homes of Hawai'i Real Estate knows this stretch of the coast past the leaderboard, this week and every other one.
