IT’S TIME TO PAY ATTENTION TO LPGA TOUR
Women’s golf has plenty of appeal
SAMMAMISH, WASH. One by one they come to the media center at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship to tell their stories of sports success, athletes most of us don’t know, but certainly should.
Tell me, sports fans, do you know the name Lydia Ko? She has been the No. 1-ranked player in the world in women’s golf for 33 consecutive weeks. Golf fans must know her. But the casual sports fan?
How about Lexi Thompson? She could win the Olympic gold medal for the United States in women’s golf in Rio in two months. Please tell me you’ve heard of her.
Ariya Jutanugarn? Stacy Lewis? Inbee Park? How about Nancy Lopez? That was a trick question. Of course you’ve heard of Nancy Lopez. But if she’s the female golfer you know best, we have serious problems here. Lopez, 59, retired from regular tournament play in 2002, when Ko was 5.
A massive disconnect exists between what we should know about the LPGA tour and what most of us do know. Today is the greatest day in the history of the LPGA tour — until tomorrow. Prize money has never been higher, $63.1 million, up from $40.5 million five years ago, and almost nothing 30 years ago. There are more tournaments (33) than there have been in eight years. The tour has more of a presence on network TV (seven events) than it has since the 1990s.
Yet almost no one knows this. Why? I’ll give you one idea: Tiger Woods, that’s why.
For 20 years, Tiger has blocked out the sun on the LPGA tour. He has been a riveting draw for the PGA Tour, and men’s golf overall, but not the women’s game. As the mainstream sports media flocked to him, they virtually ignored the LPGA.
It’s sad but true: I covered much more of the LPGA in the 1990s than I have since. It’s not right, but it’s a fact. Where Tiger went, reporters followed.
Something interesting is happening now, however. Tiger has turned 40 and is unable to play, and while the men’s game still is a very big deal, there just might be an opening for something new on the world golf stage.
Ironically, while Tiger brought lights and cameras to the game, he didn’t bring participants. Well, he did initially. There were 24.7 million golfers in the USA in 1995 — golfers being defined by the National Golf Foundation as people 6 and over who played the game on a golf course at least once during the year. (A rather generous definition, wouldn’t you say?)
In 2005, the number reached 30 million. By 2014, all the new people were gone. The number had fallen back to 24.7 million. Growth, this is not.
Interestingly, a vast untapped market of prospective golfers does exist. It’s not white men. Golf surely has maxed out on them. It’s women, millions of women who have grown up in sports because of Title IX and are looking for new challenges in their 20s and 30s. Has golf put out the welcome mat for them?
Grudgingly and slowly. This is a sport in which a sizable portion of older men still don’t want women around them when they play the game. (Muirfield, that’s you.) Golf isn’t the only place where sexism has trumped capitalism for decades, but it is rather amazing that this has occurred with the greatest capitalists among us.
But a new day just might be dawning. This is the second year that the major formerly known as the LPGA Championship has been spiffed up and put on as a partnership of the PGA of America and the LPGA, with KPMG footing the bill.
It makes you believe that almost anything is possible, maybe even a woman running for president from a major U.S. political party someday?