Monday, July 26, 2010

The Clock is Ticking--Will There Be a 2010 LPGA Tour Championship?

With a little over three months till the tournament's startup date, I'm having increasingly strong doubts this tournament will be played.

With every day that passes, I think my view is well justified. First of all the tournament is listed as TBA on the LPGA's website. This has been the status of the Tour Championship ever since the 2010 LPGA schedule was announced.

The organizing needed to run a tournament has to start well ahead of when the tournament is actually played. In fact the old ADT*, the Tour Championship's predecessor, would already be through taking volunteer applications

The LPGA is silent in the matter. I emailed Mike Scanlan in Daytona Beach. Mike said an announcement will be coming. I believe that, but the news in the announcement may not be good.

Another source(not directly affiliated with the LPGA) told me that they heard the LPGA is talking with ADT again and that also that the tournament will not be in Texas or possibly not played at all. Whether an event is played could be dependent on IMG who floated last year's tournament after the Stanford Financial debacle.

Caddie blogger Larry said in one of his blog posts that the tournament may be played in central Florida.

I'm sure Commissioner Michael Whan has worked very hard on the 2010 LPGA Tour Championship. He and others have done miracle work since Carolyn Bivens resigned. I am not being critical. All I hope is that there is a LPGA Tour tournament after the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in 2010.

*- The ADT was my hometown tournament and one I was credentialed by the LPGA to blog in 2007. I'd love to see the LPGA return to Palm Beach County.

{Update 1 (7/27/10, 2:18 pm): Here's Ryan Ballengee's take.]

[Update 2 (7/29/10, 4:20 pm): Beth Ann Baldry has a site and a date. If she's right, the annual Korea-Japan team competition is likely to have very weak teams this year.]

[Update 3 (4:26 pm): Looks like it's official--here's Baldry's Golfweek article.]

2 comments:

The Constructivist said...

I don't know how you do an event in the format of the old ADT--the best finishing tournament in golf, IMHO--without the qualifying system in place for the year.

Maybe the best way to do it is not start it as such a limited-field event, but instead start with the top 80 players on the money list, whittle it down to 32 with a stroke-play round, then down to 16 and 8 with 2 match-play rounds (seeded by stroke-play score), and then have all 8 survivors play for the the $1M winner's check....

The Florida Masochist said...

TC,

I agree it would be too late to set qualifications for a 32 player field ADT like was played from 2006-08. ADT could sponsor a full field and then go back to the old style beginning next year.