The LPGA is still out there, somewhere. Thailand, actually, as the tour starts a new season well off the beaten path. The quiet hanging over a downsized year has also been broken by some legal action. Jon Show wrote in the Sports Business Journal that the LPGA and International Management Group filed a countersuit in a civil action with the Seoul Broadcasting System, which refused to pay for its final year as the tour's Korean TV rights-holder.

SBS sued the groups last year when the tour awarded the Korean TV rights to J Golf for 2010. SBS said it had verbal assurance from the LPGA and the former commissioner, Carolyn Bivens, that it could match any other final offer. The LPGA and IMG deny such a clause and declined comment for Show's story. From the SBJ:

According to court papers, SBS says the LPGA asked for $4.5 million under terms of a five-year extension that would have begun in 2010. SBS, which paid $2.25 million a year for the rights, was informed by LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens that its $3 million counteroffer was below what she considered market value.

On Jan. 30, 2009, three days before a scheduled meeting between Bivens and SBS President Sang Chun to discuss an extension, the tour informed SBS that it had reached a tentative agreement with J Golf, according to court papers. SBS countered by offering to pay 5 percent on top of the offer from J Golf. Seven days later, J Golf was introduced as the tour’s new Korean rights partner under a five-year deal worth $4.5 million annually from 2010 to 2014. The announcement was made during an LPGA tournament in Hawaii that was sponsored by SBS.

Still wondering why Bivens is out as LPGA commish? (No, you're not, but play along anyway.) SBS offered to top J Golf's offer by 5 percent, and she ignored it. That's not all for the tour, by the way.

The legal action is one of two active multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the LPGA, which was sued for $5 million by Summit Properties over the manner in which Bivens terminated that company’s licensing contract in June 2006. That lawsuit was filed in 2007 and is still in pre-trial proceedings.

The LPGA got another spotlight Tuesday thanks to a USA Today story by Steve DiMeglio examining the tour's bounce-back to a 25-tournament schedule this year when it appeared it might have as few as 13 events at one point. That's only two fewer events than 2009 and nine fewer than 2008. DiMeglio got comments from Natalie Gulbis, who has already committed to play all 25 events, about the season.

"When the schedule was released, it was a relief," Gulbis said. "There was a time last year where every single week we were hearing rumors that another sponsor was dropping out. It wasn't looking good. There was fear. I'd like to see more domestic tournaments, more tournaments in March and April. We have a lot of weeks off, but that means we have available spots for the future. It could be a lot worse."

Gulbis is right... At one time, only 13 locked-up events were on this year's schedule. But interim commissioner Marty Evans and new Commissioner Michael Whan, who has sold everything from toothpaste to hockey pads, put on their marketing shoes and salvaged the season, which begins Thursday at the Honda PTT LPGA Thailand. In a two-week stretch earlier this year, three new sponsors and two tournaments came on board.

One eye-opening stat from DiMeglio. From now until the State Farm Classic in June, there are nine open weeks. And of the 25 tournaments, only nine are full-field, non-major events in the U.S., "which leaves limited opportunity for players outside of the top 60," DiMeglio wrote. 

The upside is that with only 25 events, there may not be many with weak fields.

"If this is our down year, at least we can show people that the best players — all of them — will be playing nearly everything," tour player Angela Stanford said. "As a player, you want to beat the best, and that's what you are going to have to do this year. I can't see the tour not getting better. It will be hard not to want to be with the LPGA. If this is the worst it's ever going to be, we're going to be fine."

Donald Trump knows a thing or two about running a business, and he’s none too impressed by how former LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens ran hers.

“Other people want to be politically correct and say what a wonderful job she did,” Trump said in an exclusive interview Tuesday evening. “She did a horrible job. It’s a really sad thing what her regime did for this great group of unbelievably talented ladies.”

Trump is more than a distant observer. From 2001 to 2008, the LPGA conducted its season-ending ADT Championship at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Fla. The tournament died this year when ADT and the LPGA couldn’t come to terms on a sponsorship deal. Trump blames the tour’s greed.

According to Trump, ADT paid $3.8 million for sponsorship rights in 2008 and Bivens wanted the company to spend $12 million in 2009. “The commissioner said, ‘Take it or leave it,’ ” Trump says, and ADT President John Koch “couldn’t believe it.”

“He’s too polite to say 'go screw yourself,'” Trump said. “So what he did is he bought time with the NBA and he took the Skills Challenge and did some other things. And then the LPGA came back to him and said, ‘Listen, we’ll take the number that you gave us [originally] and even less.’ But by that time John had spent his advertising money.

“That’s horrible business,” Trump said.

Trump also didn’t care for the way the LPGA handled his request to give a business associate of his a place in the ADT pro-am. The tour obliged Trump, he says, and then hit him up for the $5,000 entry fee.

“Five thousand dollars!” Trump recalled thinking. “For what? We pay millions of dollars and you’re not going to give us one slot?”

“They nickel-and-dimed us,” he said. “That’s the kind of thinking that was there. You really became incensed with dealing with these people.”

Trumps’ beefs with Bivens don’t end there. He said the LPGA recently approached him about holding the LPGA Championship at his course in Bedminster, N.J. “They totally loved the course, and then we never heard from them again,” he said. (Trump told the New Jersey Star-Ledger last month that he declined the tour’s request because they wanted him to commit the course for more that one year.)

Some pundits have suggested that Bivens’s aggressive style didn’t go down well because she was a woman, and that if she were a man, she would have been lauded as a tough, no-nonsense manager. Trump doesn’t buy it.

“This has nothing to do with her being male or female,” he said. “This has to do with bad business decisions and bad business people and people who were absolutely not equipped to handle that job.”

Trump also refutes the notion that her demise was triggered by the recession.

“A tremendous step backward was taken [by the LPGA] over the past couple of years, and it’s not because of the economy,” Trump said. “What happened was that in bad times, she pushed too hard.”

Sports Business Daily reported today that embattled LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens is agreeable to a buyout of the final two years of her contract, but a source close to the situation has told GOLF.com that the LPGA is refuting the story.

The story also said that the board has "authorized a golf industry exec to contact potential candidates to replace" Bivens, but that the board was not "actively negotiating a buyout."

More information is expected in the next few hours. Last week, several prominent players met over dinner to discuss Bivens's performance, and Golfweek reported that the dinner led to a letter, signed by several top players, that called for Bivens to resign.

The U.S. Women's Open, one of the biggest events in women's golf, started today and has so far been overshadowed by reports of the player insurrection.

UPDATE: LPGA Chief Communications Officer David Higdon has released a statement:

"As we've said throughout the week, we want all of those interested in women's professional golf to focus on the play here at the U.S. Women's Open, which has started today and will conclude this weekend when the 2009 champion is crowned. Out of respect to the USGA and the amazing work that they've done and continue to do in producing and hosting this great event, we will not respond to media reports on internal matters related to the LPGA business. The LPGA players, staff and Board care deeply about our Tour, and we're all working hard to achieve the same long-term objective to grow our Tour. We look forward to a great week of golf."