How do you know the golf season is winding down? Because Mailbag production has dropped precipitously. I've been on a little book leave, racing to finish my collaboration with Christina Kim on a compulsively readable diary of the 2009 season. I'll tell you more about it at the appropriate time, but now for the most pressing questions of a sluggish fall.
"Do you think the Fall Series tournaments will eventually fold? It seems like the Tour does not support them in any way. If I was Timberlake [right, with Martin Laird], I'd want a better date or I'd pull my support." - John from Austin
The major flaw in this question is that it assumes the Fall Series tournaments are real PGA Tour events. In fact, they're elaborately staged dress rehearsals. The Tour has done an excellent job Band-Aiding together a schedule for 2010, but 2011 is likely to see a lot more upheaval, with more sponsors dropping out and a handful of empty dates opening up. Voila, the current roster of fall events can slide right into the "regular season" schedule after having had a few years to work out the kinks and establish fan bases. Once that happens the Fall Series will mercifully disappear forever.
"Is the mainstream golf media ever going to focus on the LPGA's Player of the Year/money list/Vare Trophy races? You've got the top Korean [Shin], Japanese [Miyazato], Mexican [Ochoa], American [Kerr], European [Pettersen], and Taiwanese [Tseng] player each with a chance to win it all. Why isn't this covered like a pennant race in baseball?" - Bruce Simon
The LPGA is dark this week, and then it's a sprint to the finish with the final four tournaments played over four weeks in four countries: Korea, Japan, Mexico, Texas. Hopefully golf fans will start paying attention because, as noted, there are a half dozen intriguing players in the mix for all the important season-ending awards and, blessedly, strokes are still the metric, not points. But here's the problem: the events in Korea and Japan have no U.S. television coverage. The players are treated like rock stars in those countries but over here they'll be lucky to get a few mentions on "Golf Central." Luckily next year the new Golf Channel deal kicks in and the network is contractually obligated to televise more of the LPGA's overseas schedule, so hopefully this late-season black hole will not be repeated.
While the rest of her friends are in school this week, Casie Cathrea is making quite a name for herself on the LPGA Tour.
Cathrea Monday qualified for this week's LPGA event, the CVS/pharmacy LPGA Challenge in Danville, Calif. Then in her opening round, the high school freshman made a hole-in-one on the 155-yard 12th hole.
Not a bad way to announce your arrival on tour.
She double-bogeyed 13 and bogeyed 14, but Cathrea birdied 18 to finish with a respectable 74.
Michelle Wie is still the youngest player to Monday qualify for an event. Wie made the field at the 2002 LPGA Takefuji Classic at 12 years, 4 months, 14 days. Beverly Klass is the youngest player ever to compete in an LPGA event. She was 10 years, 6 months, 3 days when she finished 51st at the 1967 Dallas Civitan Open.
Wie also holds the record for being the youngest player to make the cut at an LPGA event. Wie tied for ninth at the 2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship when she was 13 years, 5 months, 17 days.
Cathrea will have to go low on Friday if she wants to equal Wie's record.
I'm off to Chicago this week for the BMW, so I can get a firsthand look at the new Cog Hill and hopefully pick up a new driver… unless Stevie wins the footrace.
"Regarding Tiger's club-throwing incident on Friday, do you think he's tired (as he said) or tired of missing putts (as Brandel Chamblee said)? I tend to agree with Brandel -- how in the world can Tiger be tired? He's the fittest guy out there."
The fatigue isn't physical, it's mental. Tiger has to put up with so much during a tournament week -- endless media prying, swarming fans, obsequious Tour staffers. Then he grinds harder than anyone on every shot. Tiger has always played a light schedule to allow himself to recharge before every event, but Deutsche Bank was his 9th tournament in 13 weeks -– he hasn't gone that hard since he was a bachelor in his early 20's. Dude is simply a bit fried.
"Let's say Tiger finishes in the top 5 the next two events and overtakes Steve in the coveted FedEx Cup points race. If he wins the Cup without winning a 'post-season' event, what does that say about the Cup, and is he POTY?"
Tiger is the player of the year until he isn't. He's won the most tournaments and money, he's got the lowest scoring average. He certainly doesn't have to take the Cup to be POY. Five quality victories is all the resume he needs. Turning your question around, if Stricker has two more good finishes (but no wins) and wins the Cup, he could very well steal the POY voting. He'd have the second-most wins on Tour and the second-best scoring average, and he would have closed the deal in the, er, playoffs. Don't forget, the players do the voting, and they bring all their jealousies and double standards to the ballot. Stricker would probably be rewarded for a career-year while Woods would lose votes for merely an average campaign by his impossible standards.
"Ship! Come on, can you comment on what's going on with Vijay's game and what you see him doing in the future?"
Sucking and fishing, respectively.
"The only thing funnier than the LPGA caddies helping to line up their players is the fact that not a single one of them ever tells the player 'Hey, you look a big closed -- let's open up and aim a little more left ...' So are they afraid to say something (knowing a live TV camera may be watching their every move), or does every single one of these players line up perfectly? And if it's the latter, then why even do it at all? Just once I want to hear one of those caddies say 'You're 25 yards right of where you want to be -- we've been working on this for weeks and you are still making the same mistake!' "
Yeah, this is part of the absurdity. I, too, have never seen a caddie call his player off for misalignment. I'm gonna ask a couple of LPGA players for some anecdotes and report back. But I really feel the USGA should ban this kind of caddie help and leave my 64-degree wedge alone.
"Not sure if it was a weak attempt at humor or what, but you are way off base saying that Todd Hamilton was the worst person in his profession for a week. After all, he had to qualify for the event in the first place and then he made the cut. Someone had to finish last among the 77 that made the Barclay's cut. That does not make Todd the "worst" professional golfer (or touring pro) for the week. Your comment was either misinformed or a cheap shot or a stupid attempt at humor. Where do you rank this week among sportswriters?" —Andrew Langan
About 77th.
"What are your feelings about Suzann Pettersen? I love her -- plays with fire, looks nice, and just has a really powerful game. It seems like she should be a bigger star than she is." -- Mailbag loyalist John from Austin
I'm a big Pettersen fan, too. It will be interesting to see she if she can build on last weekend's commanding victory at the Canadian Women's Open. A couple of years ago I asked her mom how Suzann had spent the off-season. "Skiing and partying," was the answer. Suzann has definitely become more dedicated to her craft. The issues with her are mostly mental, as she had blown a handful of tournaments since her last LPGA win, way back in '07. I think slamming the door in Canada will free her up, and I wouldn't be surprised if she won a couple more times this fall to grab her first money title and POY.
"Shipnuck -- the Mailbag disappears for, what, 2 or 3 years, mysteriously reappears deep into the golf season and you have the audacity to bust chops because either the quantity or quality of queries doesn't meet your standards? A season for the Mailbag should have the same arc as a season on the Tour, and late-in-the-season party crashers have to take what they can get...."
So true. I can assure you that next year the Mailbag will define the season from Hawaii to Atlanta. Think of this fall's entry as a little test run and a chance to earn my privileges, sort of like Tiger turning pro after taking the U.S. Amateur.
Beth Daniel's captain's picks -- 49-year-old Juli Inkster and 19-year-old Michelle Wie -- will be crucial to the U.S.'s bid to retain the Solheim Cup next week. Inkster has had an uneven season, but she instantly becomes the team leader on a callow squad, with three rookies and an average age of 25.6 (excluding Inkster, who has a daughter Wie's age). Inkster's 14-8-5 record is one of the best in Solheim history, and she radiates the kind of intensity that a team can rally around. The U.S. is considered the favorite because of its depth, but the Europeans boast a handful of dangerous power players. Enter Wie, who leads the LPGA in birdies per round (4.08) and is fourth in driving distance (267.2 yards).
The LPGA and IMG have announced the cancellation of this year's China LPGA, which was to be played Oct. 23-25. Little detail was given on the reason for the change, but it's another bit of bad news for the tour, which has lost seven other tournaments since 2007 and has an interim commissioner running things after the resignation earlier this summer of Carolyn Bivens. The complete release from the tour and IMG is below:
"The IMG-managed China LPGA tournament, originally scheduled for mid-October, will not be staged in 2009 and we are now focusing our efforts on ensuring the event's return to China in 2010 and 2011. We look forward to the second half of the 2009 LPGA Tour season, which will include two IMG-managed LPGA Tour events, the Samsung World Championship (Sept. 17-20) and the LPGA Tour Championship (Nov. 19-22)."
Despite the LPGA's recent turbulence, one thing seems certain: The women's game is a growing concern in Asia. The latest evidence is the web traffic stimulated by the victory of Japan's Ai Miyazato at last week's Evian Masters. As Jon Show of Sports Business Journal reported, LPGA.com attracted 6.5 million pageviews this past week, up 45% from the
4.47 million that visited the site during last year’s event. Approximately 35% of all visitors were from Japan. The scoring section at LPGA.com drew 1.4 million pageviews, up 93%
from 727,000 during last year’s tournament. Pageviews at USLPGA.jp,
the tour’s Japanese-language site, more than doubled an average
week on tour, to 270,000.
The tour is scheduled to visit Japan for the Mizuno Classic, on Nov. 6-8.
Some LPGA players in France for the Evian Masters got a scare on Wednesday night when their hotel caught fire.
AFP reported: "Several
players were staying at the Hotel Pavillons du Golf, and South Korean
Amy Yang threw out her mattress and jumped to the ground from the
balcony. Her father suffered burns to his arm."
Christina Kim, who is staying at a different hotel, also tweeted, "Thankfully no one
was seriously hurt. Catriona Matthew's hubby suffered a hurt ankle but
was able to caddy/walk today thankfully!!!"
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.”
Outgoing LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens and her acting replacement, Marsha J. Evans, have at least one thing in common: both have been ousted by boards of directors that found their management styles overbearing.
Bivens essentially was given the heave-ho last week when several members of the LPGA’s board called for her resignation. Evans’ turn came in 2005 when she was ousted as president and CEO of the American Red Cross, and received a severance package valued at about $780,000.
The [Red Cross] board's executive committee was unhappy with her communication and collaboration with the 50-member Board of Governors and … the board believed she needed to change her "command-and-control" management style.
Evans pledged to improve, to involve the board earlier in more issues and to coach her management team to communicate more with the board.
But in early December [2006], she and the board clashed again over her decision to remove several senior executives, and most of the board's 14-member Executive Committee decided that they had lost confidence in her leadership.
Before joining the Red Cross, Evans was national executive director of Girl Scouts of the USA. According to Forbes.com, she currently serves on the boards of the Office Depot, the Huntsman Corporation, Weight Watchers International, North Highland and The Estate of Lehman Brothers Holdings.
The LPGA announced in a press release Monday that Rear Admiral Marsha J. Evans, U.S. Navy (retired) will serve as the player association's acting commissioner, effective immediately. Commissioner Carolyn Bivens also announced her resignation Monday.
In addition to this appointment, the association also announced that Annika Sorenstam will become an advisor to the tour's board of directors.
“Obviously, I will do everything possible to ensure that the LPGA remains the pre-eminent women’s sports association in the world,” Sorenstam said in a release from the tour. “I’m committed to getting up to speed quickly on the challenges facing the board right now, and will assist the LPGA in a number of ways both immediately and long-term.”
LPGA board member Leslie Greis, as well as board members Juli Inkster, Helen Alfredsson and Bill Morton, will lead the executive search committee, with the help of the executive search firm Spencer Stuart.
“We’ll soon have in place a commissioner to lead us into 2010 and beyond, but until then, it’s important that we immediately appoint an acting commissioner whom we know and trust,” Board of Directors Chairman Dawn Hudson said in the release. “As a board of players and independent directors, we wanted an acting commissioner with experience leading large organizations, one who appreciates and listens to our player members and tournament owners, understands sponsors and their challenges and needs, and has a track record that commands respect. We’re pleased that Marty Evans will be our acting commissioner, as she fits all the criteria necessary during these challenging economic times for sports leagues."
During her career, Evans has held top positions at the American Red Cross and Girl Scouts of the USA. Most recently she has served on the Board of Directors of the LPGA.
Recently, several prominent players met during the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic to discuss their displeasure with Bivens's reign as commissioner. Since 2007, the LPGA has lost seven tournaments. The players then sent a letter to the board of directors calling for Bivens to resign. According to Golf Week, the letter said the tour's problems couldn't all be blamed on a poor economy and "expressed a desire to rebuild relationships with longtime sponsors."
In the release, Bivens stated that she was proud of what she accomplished during her tenure at the LPGA.
"My job was to be a change agent, to help move the LPGA into the strongest possible position to ensure its future. Those changes were only possible because the members are dynamic women who provide great value to our sponsors and tournaments," she said. "It is time to turn this organization over to someone who can build on the solid foundation we’ve established. I wish the LPGA and its members nothing but fairways and greens as it enters its 60th year.”
LPGA Board of Directors President Michelle Ellis was also quoted in the release: “We respect Carolyn’s decision to resign since she has led this organization professionally and passionately the past four years. We appreciate the unwavering commitment that she provided the LPGA, and during her four years, Carolyn accomplished a great deal for the LPGA and its player members.”
