2019 CME Championship purse up to $5M

When Terry Duffy calls, LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan answers.

Duffy, CME Group chairman and CEO, has a record of setting the bar higher in women’s golf.

Duffy’s latest pitch: double the purse at the 2019 CME Group Tour Championship to $5 million and raise the winner’s check to $1.5 million. And while it will remain a season-long race to qualify for the event, anyone in the field of 60 will be able to take home the record-setting prize.

“My kids see men walk off greens with 1.5 million dollar checks almost every week,” Whan said. “You never see a woman walk off the green with that. This a game-changer in terms of as Condoleezza Rice said to us at KPMG, ‘They’ve got to see it to be it.’ Terry is gonna let a few women see it.”

It’s no wonder that Whan refers to Duffy as one of the LPGA’s heroes.

“I want to be a leader,” said Duffy, who grew this event from a small proam tournament at Tiburon to one of the pillars of the tour. “From our standpoint, that’s what CME we’ve done our entire career. So we’re a leader, and we want to be a little bit of a trailblazer.”

Duffy asked Whan, “What’s the highest price on the LPGA?”

That would be the U.S. Women’s Open at $5 million. Duffy said he didn’t want to chase a number. What he did want to achieve, however, is getting others thinking about doing the same.

“It’s awesome,” Brooke Henderson said of the record prize. “I think a lot of girls on tour are really going to appreciate that. And I feel like even women around the world, when they see that, they’ll feel like we are getting closer to being level.”