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That is the only conclusion I can draw from this diatribe of his.
The LPGA, in yet another sideways bit of marketing savvy, elected to stage Evans’ press conference on Wednesday at the Sugar Land City Hall, off-campus from the site of its season finale. Maybe they hoped players wouldn’t notice the details of the schedule if they handed it out elsewhere.
Unless you’re dumb or a non-jealous LPGA fan living in a cave, you would know already that the LPGA schedule was given to players at a meeting on Tuesday night. That’s why it was reported by the likes of Ron Sirak, Beth Ann Baldry, and Associated Press on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Some LPGA players leaked the new schedule out to certain members of the media.
It sounds to me as if Elling wasn’t one of them and that’s why he wrote what he did.
I got a couple of other problems with what Elling wrote.
Setting aside the bombast and bluster, the LPGA season next year will likely consist of 24 tournaments, the fewest since 21 were staged in both 1970 and ’71, a rollback spanning nearly four decades as the tour prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary next year.
More alarmingly, only 13 of the tournaments will be staged in the United States, the smallest number ever. If it wasn’t the LPGA, with that kind of minimalist American presence, they’d be calling it a mini-tour. A mini-tour with major underpinning issues.
*****
Out of sight, out of mind? Playing abroad means even less media attention in the States and mostly tape-delayed TV coverage as the Golf Channel becomes the tour’s primary broadcaster in 2010.
Before a golf writer complains about the tape delay coverage of the LPGA or its foreign based schedule, they out have something drummed into their heads. Firstly GC’s contract with the PGA Tour which includes Nationwide events. They get first placement on the broadcast schedule over the LPGA.
Secondly, and more pertinently to Elling’s remarks, of the 11 foreign LPGA tournaments four of them are still played in North American time zones. Yes Virginia, Canada and Mexico are on the same clock as the United States of America.
As for the other 7, the Women’s British Open is broadcast by ABC who puts it on tape delayed. Which I have repeatedly complained about in the past.What’s your solution Steve? Play the British Open in Newport RI or Portsmouth NH?
Of the last six events, if they aren’t on tape delay, look at the hours they would be broadcast. Three, Four a.m. in the morning. How many golf fans are going to rise for that? The 2003 Solheim Cup went on the air at 4 a.m. in the morning but since it was without Michelle Wie almost nobody in the golf media noticed.
The tour instead created a season-ending LPGA Championship, signed Stanford Financial as the title sponsor, made it a full-field event and moved it to Houston, where it will be played for the first time this week. Now the radioactive part.
Allen Stanford, who wanted the tournament played in Houston, where his company has a large corporate presence, was tossed in jail. No replacement has been found to foot the title sponsorship bill, the format of the tournament has been criticized, and the event is running opposite the European Tour’s big-money Race to Dubai finale. Nice timing.
The ADT has been played the same weekend in November going back to 2003.(At least. I didn’t check 2001 and 2002 because I’m in a hurry.) Which is the same weekend the 2009 Tour Championship is played. When do you suggest they play the tournament? Next weekend is Thanksgiving.
One last bit of Elling derangement.
Twelve months ago, Bivens announced that the popular ADT event outside Miami,
Steve, you’re from Florida. The City of West Palm Beach where the ADT was played is not considered outside of Miami. When you were working at the Orlando Sentinel, were your offices outside Daytona Beach or Ocala? Those are Florida cities closer to Orlando than West Palm Beach is to Miami.
Did anyone at LPGA HQ notice that the Champions Tour’s fifth major – the Jeld-Wen Tradition, played in Oregon – is being played the same weekend as the LPGA’s Safeway Classic at Pumpkin Ridge?
The Jeld-Wen Tradition is being played in Bend, Oregon.
Just up the road (or 186 miles away according to Mapquest), the Safeway Classic is being played in North Plains, Oregon.
Two tournaments in the same state that close together? Anyone think was a scheduling foul up? One problem I see right off the top of my head is finding pro-am partners sufficient for both tournaments.
A commenter at Waggleroom notes this isn’t the first time for such a scheduling conflict. Three years ago, The LPGA, Champions, and Nationwide Tours were all playing events in Georgia on the same weekend.
Here it is-
Feb. 18-21 — Honda LPGA Championship (Thailand)
Feb. 25-28 — HSBC Women’s Champions (Singapore)
March 25-28 — J Golf Classic (La Costa, Calif.)
April 1-4 — Kraft Nabisco Championship
April 29-May 3 — Corona Championship (Mexico)
May 10-16 — Bell Micro LPGA Classic (Alabama)
June 10-13 — State Farrm Classic (Illinois)
June 17-20 — ShopRite Classic (Atlantic City)
June 24-27 — Wegman’s LPGA Championship
July 1-4 — Jamie Farr Owens Corning (Toledo)
July 8-11 — U.S. Women’s Open (Oakmont)
July 22-25 — Evian Masters (France)
July 29-Aug. 1 — Ricoh Women’s British Open (Royal Birkdale)
Aug. 20-22 — Safeway Classic (Pumpkin Ridge, Ore)
Aug. 26-29 — CN Canadian Women’s Open
Sept. 10-12 — P&G Beauty NW Arkansas Championship
Sept. 30-Oct. 3 — Acapulco LPGA Classic (Mexico)
Oct. 7-10 — Navistar LPGA Classic (Alabama)
Oct. 14-17 — CVS/pharmacy LPGA Challenge (California)
Oct. 28-31 — China
Nov. 4-7 — Japan
Nov. 11-14 — Lorena Ochoa Invitational (Mexico)
Nov. 18-21 — LPGA Tour Championship
South Korea TBD
Some quick comments-
China is back
South Korea takes place Oct 21-25 or it flips places with China
Wegman’s(In Rochester NY) is now the LPGA Championship. No chance it will be played at Oak Hill? We can dream, can’t we.
Tour Championship has no determined home for next year. Could we see it come back to Florida?
No Florida tournament for the second straight year
Phoenix isn’t on the schedule. Could a sponsor step forward at the last minute like happened a year ago?
That new tournament that may have sprung up in South Carolina must be dead or still on the drawing board.
The full 2010 schedule will be announced later this week. From AP-
The ShopRite LPGA Classic is back in business.
Tournament organizers, ShopRite and the LPGA announced Monday that the longtime Atlantic City-area fixture will return to the women’s schedule in June after a three-year absence.
The $1.5 million event will be held June 14-20 at the Seaview Resort in Galloway Township outside Atlantic City, coinciding with the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
Tournament executive director Tim Erensen said the parties signed a series of five one-year contracts that include opt-outs for all signees after each year.
This is without question good news for the LPGA and it would have never happened if Carolyn Bivens was still Commissioner. It was her decision to give Shoprite’s dates on the LPGA schedule to a new sponsor and tournament(Since departed Ginn Tribute) that caused the tournament to fold up its tent. At the time it happened I sharply criticized Bivens’ actions and said the course she was taking was potentially disastrous for the LPGA. I proved to be right, but few people other than myself was willing to say the truth about Bivens till 2008. She’s gone now and it is already looking like the LPGA is better off without her and can make a recovery from the mess she created.
Hat tip- Waggleroom
She edged Paula Creamer by two shots. Wie opened the final round tied for the lead with Cristie Kerr.
Wie birdied two of the first three holes and was never out of the lead. At some point during the final round, both Creamer and Kerr tied Wie for the lead but fell back. Creamer’s bogey at 17 was particularly critical.
Wie closed out her win with a birdie on 18.
Jiyai Shin after entering the weekend with a 3-shot lead, finished 74-71 and ended the tournament in a 3-way tie for 3rd with Kerr and Morgan Pressel.
Lorena Ochoa finished sixth. While Shin widened her lead for POY it is still a very much open race. Ochoa can still take the title and doesn’t necessarily need a win. Kerr can do it with a win if Ochoa and Shin both finish out of the top 10 in next week’s tour championship.
I won’t mention what Wie’s victory ended. The golf media has only been hammering it over our heads for the last few months. Then some members of the media and the American public look at Wie or Asians as lesser Americans. I won’t get into that stupid subject unless one of those culprits then make hay of Wie’s win as a American triumph.
The next few days are sure to see a deluge of articles about how big the win was for both Wie and the LPGA. Wie’s critics can’t separate the fact that the LPGA’s future success or even survival may be riding on this woman’s back. What other female golfer excites fans and brings them to tournaments? It ain’t Ochoa, Shin, or even Kerr and Creamer.
Chapter 11 of the South Koreans dominate the LPGA in 2009. From AP-
South Korea’s Bo Bae Song won the Mizuno Classic for her first LPGA Tour title, closing with a 4-under 68 on Sunday for a three-stroke victory over Lorena Ochoa, Brittany Lang and Hee Young Park.
Song finished with a 15-under 201 total at Kintetsu Kashikojima and earned $210,000 in the event co-sanctioned by the Japan LPGA.
The top-ranked Ochoa shot a 64, and Lang and Park had 68s.
Jiyai Shin, the 2008 winner who is trying to hold off Ochoa in the player of the year points race, closed with a 69 to tie for fifth with Yani Tseng (67), Mi-Jeong Jeon (69) and Inbee Park (69) at 11 under.
Song had six birdies and a bogey — on the par-4 14th — in the final round.
Song is a member of the JLPGA Tour. Her victory gives her the ability to play the LPGA now. Will she? With the LPGA losing tournaments, the JLPGA or KLPGA look like a much safer bet right now. So much so, some LPGA golfers are going to JLPGA qualifying school.
Lorena Ochoa’s second place finish puts her just four points(147-143) behind Ji Yai Shin in the Player of the Year race. The next closest golfers are Cristie Kerr at 118, Ai Miyazato at 111, and Yani Tseng and Suzann Pettersen who are tied with 110. Barring a late miracle, I think Ochoa or Shin will come out on top.
Shin’s lead on the money list is much more secure. She has $240,000 more dollars than Ai Miyazato. Unless Shin doesn’t make the cut the final two events of the year, or the same golfer wins both, she will be both leading money winner and Rookie of the Year.
Also blogging about the Mizuno Classic- The Constructivist at Mostly Harmless. TC makes not of Ochoa having the lowest scoring average this year and with that the ability to win 2 of the 3 major year ending LPGA awards.
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ROK Drop linked with Bo Bae Song wins Mizuno Classic
It was her second win of 2009. From ChannelnewsAsia-
South Korea’s Choi Na-Yeon fired a final round 67 to win the USLPGA Hana Bank Kolon Championship on Sunday by a stroke from Taiwan’s Yani Tseng and Sweden’s Maria Hjorth.
Choi, runner-up to Tseng as Rookie of the Year in 2008, closed it out to take the 255,000 US dollars winners’ cheque, sinking five birdies for her first win on the LPGA Tour since joining.
Fellow Korean Ran HongThe was four shots back in third while Kim Song-Hee was fourth and Shin Jiyai fifth.
Tseng and Choi finished respectively 1-2 in the 2008 LPGA Rookie of the Year race. Tseng won twice on tour before Choi got her first victory. Which was the Samsung Championship in September. Now Choi and Tseng are even victory wise.
Choi’s win was the tenth by a South Korean golfer this year on the LPGA.
The article doesn’t mention Choi having to birdie 18 to win by one shot. Tseng also birdied 18 but Hjorth could only make a par 5 on the finishing hole.
With her fifth place finish, Ji Yai Shin solidified her lead for both Player of the Year and leading money winner for 2009. She holds a 10 point lead in the first and an almost $200,000 lead in the later. Shin is the defending champion of next week’s LPGA Mizuno Classic.
Sorry for the hurried post. I have plans for today that will keep away from the computer almost all day.
The Constructivist is also blogging about Na Yeon Choi’s victory.
The search for Carolyn Bivens replacement took barely three months. From AP-
The LPGA Tour has picked Michael Whan to be its new commissioner, turning to a former marketing executive in golf and hockey equipment to rebuild the tour’s relationships with sponsors.
Whan previously worked for TaylorMade and Wilson golf companies and most recently was president of Mission-Itech Hockey.
“I was that crazy high school kid cutting greens at 5:30 in the morning so he could play free golf in the afternoon and caddying on Sundays,” Whan said Wednesday, during an introductory news conference at Madison Square Garden.
He was selected following a three-month search to replace Carolyn Bivens, whom the players forced out in July as the LPGA Tour kept losing sponsors.
Whan will start in his new job next January. In the meantime, acting Commissioner Marta Evans will continue to run the LPGA.
Sal Johnson at Golf Observer notes how the LPGA’s PR department dropped the ball on the announcement of their new Commissioner and maybe attributing this to their recent letting go of VP Connie Wilson. Sal, whose views I have come into disagreement with in the past, may be right. Connie did a mostly thankless job at LPGA HQ for a long time. I had some interaction with her on the phone and via email, and for the most part it was good. She would always answer my inquiries promptly. If Connie was still around in Daytona, the announcement about Whan would most likely have been handled better.
That said, I’m going to cut the LPGA and its new Commissioner some slack at this time. The Bivens era was a disaster, and I was very critical almost from the beginning. Ladies professional golf right now is facing its worst ever crisis. I want the LPGA to succeed and prosper. Whan has a very difficult road ahead of him to accomplish that. At this point I don’t know if he’ll be successful, but I do wish him good luck.
Also blogging on the hiring of Michael Whan- Ryan at Waggleroom and Stephanie Wei.
It is her 3rd win in 2009. From AP-
Lorena Ochoa successfully defended her Navistar LPGA Classic title, overcoming early troubles to shoot a 2-under 70 on Sunday for a four-stroke victory over Michelle Wie and Brittany Lang.
Ochoa finished at 18-under 270 on The Senator course at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail’s Capitol Hill complex to snap an 11-start winless streak dating to the Corona Championship in late April. The top-ranked Mexican star has three victories this year and 27 overall on the LPGA Tour.
Ochoa wiped out her three-stroke lead coming into the day with a bogey and double bogey in the first five holes. She erased any drama with a birdie on No. 17.
Wie overcame a gimpy left ankle to close with a 66, while Lang had a 70.
After winning 8 times in 2008, most members of the golf media have labeled Ochoa as being in a slump this year. True she didn’t win for 11 tournaments this year, but has anyone looked how competitive the LPGA is right now? There hasn’t been this wide open a money and player of the year race in a decade at least. Ochoa is unlikely to win the former but still has a shot at the later. Why is it bad for ladies professional golf when you have exciting races rather than one player dominating?
Michelle Wie finished in a tie for 2nd. She probably won’t get a victory in 2009 but I’ll be surprised if she don’t get her first professional triumph in 2010.
The World Championship had been sponsored by the Korean conglomerate for 15 years. From The Golf Channel-
Amid a rash of positive sponsorship news on the LPGA front, GolfChannel.com learned via a memo from acting commissioner Marty Evans that the circuit will lose Samsung as the title sponsor of its World Championship held last month at Torrey Pines.
According to the memo the tour was “surprised†to learn of Samsung’s intentions early Oct. 2 because, “all indications during tournament week were to the contrary.â€
IMG Golf, which owns the event, is optimistic they will find a replacement sponsor before next year’s event, which was won this year by Na Yeon Choi.
“Samsung was a terrific title sponsor of this event for 15 years, which is an incredible run,†Jon Wagner, the senior vice president of IMG Golf, told the Sports Business Journal. “This tournament is one of the gems of the LPGA Tour schedule and we will begin actively talking to new potential title sponsors as the World Championship heads into its 30th year of play.â€
Holes continue to appear in the LPGA schedule almost as quickly as acting Commissioner Marta Evans gets one plugged. Her successor has their work cut out for them.
Note- State Farm did renew its LPGA tournament sponsorship this week.
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