The entire leadership of the Japan PGA is set to resign after a scandal involving organised crime.
The mass resignation follows the news that two of Japan's Professional Golfers Association (PGA) executives were found to have played golf and socialised with an underworld crime boss.
PGA vice chairman Shinsaku Maeda, 61, and board director Tadayoshi Bando, 67, reportedly played golf and dined with the head of a yakuza organised crime group in the southern island of Kyushu.
Yakuza refers to members of transnational organized crime syndicates in Japan.
The PGA's policy board decided Wednesday on the mass resignation, to be followed by the election of new representatives in January.
A report by the Jiji Press news agency said that all 91 PGA representatives will voluntarily step down to help restore public trust in the body.
"We take the matter very seriously. We want to do our utmost to prevent a recurrence of such a case," said PGA current vice chairman Nobuyuki Abe told Jiji.
The PGA oversees the country's men's professional golf activities, including the licensing of golfers and development of junior players, but does not run the Japan Golf Tour. That job is done by the Japan Golf Tour Organisation, which took over the role from the PGA in 1999 when it was founded.
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