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Many are saying how bad the 2010 schedule is but if you look at what is happening to the LPGA the future is bright and things are looking it up, it could of been even uglier if the LPGA didn't get rid of Carolyn Bivens and got a stellar performance out of Marty Evans and Zayra Calderon
So the shoe has fallen on the LPGA Tour. On Wednesday they announced a schedule for next year, the cumulation of the Carolyn Bivens era in which only 23 events were announced for 2010. Making it even harder to shallow is the fact that only 13 tournaments will be played in the United States.
The LPGA is an example of what has gone wrong in America these days, instead of thriving it's gone backwards in opportunities for it's members who will now have to work twice as hard to keep pace with past years. Instead of trying to create opportunities in the good old USofA it's outsourcing half of it's product to foreign lands. Hard to believe that Mexico will have as many events (3) as California, Arizona, Texas, Florida and North Carolina. Just have to wonder what the players between say 60 and 130 on the money list feel about having to pay a fortune to fly off to some foreign land for the opportunity to win a few thousand dollars in prize money. In 2010, LPGA pros will play for $40 million, 62% of the $64 million they played for just last year. To show how much the LPGA has lost, it's the lowest amount of events since 1971, when the tour had just 21 events. In looking at the schedule the only top-ten city that is on the schedule is San Diego, cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C. and even Phoenix are left off. While there will be three events in places like Mexico and two in Alabama, hot bed golf destinations like Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina have zilch.
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Still the Carolyn Bivens era gets a lot of blame, along with the LPGA board for stupidly giving her a three year extension of her contract in June of 2008. Bivens track record then wasn't very good so this act of confidence by Rae Evans, who was the chairwoman of the LPGA Board of Directors at the time, was probably one of the worst decisions in the 59 year history of the LPGA Tour, one that set up the LPGA for failure and if it wasn't for a player revolt in June that ousted Bivens things could of been even worst. Just think of what the 2010 schedule would of looked like if Bivens was still involved, it wouldn't of been as good as the one announced. Even with the ouster of Bivens, it cost the tour between a million and a million and a half dollars to get rid of her, depending on who you talk with because of the two years left on her contract. Financially the LPGA isn't rich so it will have to recover from this big monetary lost.
But guys and gals enough of this depressing news. I bring this up because we can only learn from our failures, history will deem Bivens as one of the worst leaders of any sports league, the LPGA and all of golf has to learn from this dire mistake and hopefully make sure that it doesn't happen again.
It's time to look at the positives of all of this. In my estimation the LPGA hit rock bottom on October 4th, the day it was announced that Samsung was going to end it's sponsorship of the Samsung Championship. Along with that was rumors of how the future of the LPGA wasn't very rosy and that the tour in 2010 could have as few as 12 events. But with the hard work of interim commissioner Marty Evans and Zayra Calderon, that never happened.
Little is know of Calderon, she was the person responsible for making the Duramed Futures Tour a big success. If we can find anything in the rumble of the Bivens era that was good, one of them is the purchase by Bivens of the Duramed Tour and retaining Calderon as a member of the LPGA senior management team. When Bivens was fired, Calderon took the reins along with Evans to make the peace with sponsors and find a way to add more events that was either on the bubble of coming back or had completely left the LPGA like the ShopRite event in New Jersey. In the last four months they have been tirelessly working to make the best of a bad situation.
The LPGA has made a very savvy choice in hiring Michael Whan. I have not met Whan, but I have a good feeling on him as many high level folks in golf have had a good experience with him and the fact that Whan is a listener before he acts is helpful. My first experience (frankly my only personal one) with Carolyn Bivens was at the 2005 Solheim Cup. I was in a small group of reporters that had a sitdown chat with her and while listening to her talk about what she wanted to do in the future. It was a weird talk, it was obvious that Bivens wasn't very golf-savvy. I was sitting with a Washington D.C. scribe and in the middle of her talk glanced over and whispered to him, "This woman is crazy, this s**t isn't going to fly." A couple of weeks later I played golf with this same scribe, who also had his doubts on her but said, "We can't pass judgement on her now, have to give her a year or so." By the Masters six months later, that scribe and the rest of the media had made there decision on Bivens and it turned out very poorly for her.
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He has to figure out a way to gain more events and in places like Arizona, Florida and Hawaii. These are places that need to showcase courses and help spur travel to there destination and what better way to showcase it by having the best woman of golf play the course and show it on TV.
At the same time Whan has to make his players become house-hold names. He got a great start with Michelle Wie winning, the LPGA needs more heros to replace the Nancy Lopez and the Annika Sorenstam's that have left. Talking about Sorenstam, maybe he can talk her into coming back and playing again on tour, that would bring excitement. Another problem is the lack of American's winning and the fact that too many Koreans are winning, honestly this is a very touchy subject. We know what happened when Bivens took a stab at the Korean problem and that wasn't the answer. Whan has to find a way to market them better, honestly a Jiyai Shin can be marketed as one of the best female players in the world and a wonder to watch.
Television has to also help and Whan is again at the right place at the right time on this. That is because Golf Channel is finishing up it's first year with Jack Graham running it's live operation and Graham has already made a lot of key changes to help production values improve, for proof of that just look at how received the Solheim Cup shows were. They were as good as Golf Channel has ever been and as good as any network. Graham is also keen in knowing the importance of letting viewers understand who the players are and you can bet that in 2010 you will see the Golf Channel introducing more players and getting to know them instead of just showing shot after shot after shot.
Another problem the LPGA/Golf Channel is going to have is making sure that there are slots to put it's events on live. Right now the Golf Channel's airtime is very crowded between covering the European Tour, PGA Tour, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour. So look for some LPGA events to be tape delayed at night. This won't help either the Golf Channel or the LPGA. An example of that was the disappointment for a lot of folks that found out the results of Mexico before it ended because that show was an hour behind on tape delayed. Yes the rating were very high for Wie's victory but still folks don't like taped shows.
One suggestion, a combination of a tape show being streamed live on Golf Channel.Com and LPGATour.Com before it's shown hours later. The way the Golf Channel creates their taped delayed shows is to record them in real time, with commercial slugs and all. So why can't the Golf Channel, while recording the golf also stream it live over the internet? It's the best of both worlds, for those that want it live they can see it on the internet and for others they can watch it at night. In a email to Graham he thought the idea had some merit, would look at the legal ramifications and get a consensus if others think it's a good idea.
Lastly I really hope that Whan can figure out how to get more events in the good old UsofA. It's a shame to see events like Phoenix disappear, hell last year over 100,000 people gathered for the week to watch the best ladies in the world play golf. Talking about great community support how about the loss of Kingsmill and Corning, these places were institutes on the LPGA Tour for years. How can the LPGA Tour bypass great cities like New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles for places in Thailand, Singpapore and Mexico. It's not very American, is it? Yes the LPGA has a lot of problems for the coming year, but in looking at the water glass it's a lot fuller than empty. The important element is that leadership is strong again, it's players have always been hard workers in bringing the tour in the limelight and will work very hard to give a good show. The economy will get better, along with that more opportunities will happen. 2010 will be very important if bringing the LPGA back. At least Michael Whan has the foundation to rebuild the LPGA to what it was like just a short time ago and possibly take it to new horizons in future years.
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