April Is the Cruelest Month for the LPGA in '09...but for '10?

Now that the dust has settled from last week's disturbing news that Ginn is ending their sponsorship of both their LPGA and Champions Tour events, it's clear that the Ginn Open is gone and the LPGA's April is looking mighty thin. If it weren't for their events in Asia and Mexico this winter and early spring, the LPGA would have one tournament each in February, March, and April--assuming they are able to line up a course in Phoenix to host their late-March event.

If I were Commissioner, here's what I'd be doing right now to shore up the LPGA's spotty spring for 2010. First, I'd open up talks with the heads of the KLPGA, JLPGA, LET, and ALPG to explore the possibility of some serious co-sponsorship in winter and early spring '10. I'm talking setting up an extended Asian-Pacific Swing to start off the LPGA season, like so:

January: kick off the 2010 women's professional golf season with a bang at the HSBC Women's World Match Play in Rio (top 64 Rolex Rankings, co-sponsored by LPGA, JLPGA, KLPGA, and LET), then fly the LPGA's best back to Florida for the revived ADT--yes, ADT--Championship.

February: join the LET and ALPG in co-sponsoring the two big Australian events, then offer the JLPGA co-sponsorship of the LPGA's Thailand event and craft a similar deal with the KLPGA and a Korean transnational to flesh out the shortest month of the year.

March: end the Asian swing with the HSBC Women's Champions event, then move the SBS Open after it to bring the tour back to the States (and provide a kickoff for those who couldn't get into the previous events or who didn't want to travel to Asia), before heading to Mexico for 2 weeks for the MasterCard Classic and Corona Championship (the latter moved up from April).

April: make the Phoenix event the last tune-up before the the year's first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, which closes out the Asian-Pacific Swing and comes the week after the Masters to capitalize on media coverage. Then build in a 2-week break before kicking off the Eastern Swing, hopefully with an event in May to precede the Michelob Ultra.

That's 12 LPGA events to kick off the 2010 season, 4 of them in the States. Unlike the fall Asian-Pacific Swing, this one would consist mostly of full-field events with cuts. Setting up the schedule this way would keep the mid-level pros on the LPGA happy and competitive, as spots would open up for those lower down the money list and world rankings when some of the top players decide to limit their early-season jet-setting. But there are still 4 major-quality events in the swing and a few others that might come to rival the Phoenix event in prestige, assuming the best off the LPGA decide to play golf in Australia and southeast Asia in February. Moreover, all the major women's tours would expand their lineups and save money (by pooling their resources), while the golfy media would find it easier to focus on women's golf (as many of the top PGA golfers play quite limited winter schedules).

My next move would be to do whatever it takes to beef up the LPGA's May-July stateside schedule and end their strange tradition of a summer vacation in August. If that means crawling back to ShopRite on hands and knees, so be it. If that means starting up some new events with only a $1M purse and a reduced fee to the tournament organizers, so be it. The LPGA needs to face reality and offer discount, basic, and premium tiers to locations and sponsors willing to take a bet on Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, Michelle Wie, and the other LPGAers who are off the national radar compared to them. Better to have relatively few breaks between May and October, particularly if it means moving into markets with relatively large populations of Asian and Latino heritage, than to hold the line on a pre-financial crisis strategic plan. When the worldwide economy recovers, the tour and its members will be well-positioned for massive growth.

Finally, I'd lay the groundwork for that kind of growth by immediately pursuing a full-spectrum new media strategy--not just as a back-up plan in case the 2010-2015 network tv contract turns out to be a flop (I still owe everyone a post explaining my odd optimism on this), but, and more important, as an effort to reach and hook new fans, ages 5 and up, by getting them interested in a wide range of LPGA players. Hound Dog is on the right track here, but I'd go further. Start by choosing 1 hole per weekend round and connecting a live cam to the web all day on it, following 1 pairing around per round in live streaming video, providing longer post-round highlights than you can get on Golf Channel directly on LPGA.com, and turning each player page into a portal for interaction as well as information (with links to an FAQ [frequently asked questions] page, a form for asking questions of them, their blog, Facebook page, archived interviews, profiles, and features in the media and blogosphere [not that hard to do, what with rss and all these days], not to mention lots and lots of photos and videos, for each player). I've heard a lot about making LPGA.com a must-see site, but seen little effective action so far. That needs to change.

A related move consists of developing different tactics for different target markets who haven't yet moved to the LPGA in large enough numbers and restructuring LPGA.com to include cute stuff for girls, reality-tv stuff for teenagers and young adults, fashion stuff for single women, hot stuff for single guys, family stuff for the rest of us, and funny stuff for everyone (more of Christina Kim, Jane Park, Minea Blomqvist, and other great interviews). Yeah, that's stereotypical, but the list can be expanded and fine-tuned. The key is to use each target marketing tactic to tell part of the main story and contribute to the central strategy: the LPGA is both a truly global tour and the face of a new America. That means celebrating the tour's diversity and no longer betting the farm on the appeal of a handful of mostly blonde American stars. That means giving people a chance to confront and rethink their stereotypes about the tour and its players. That means creating an LPGA blog and assembling the tour's best writer-players to join Lisa Mickey in getting different kinds of stories out, dialoging with good commenters, engaging the best bloggers on women's golf, and influencing the golfy media.

The key in all this is giving a wide range of people from around the world both reason to check out the LPGA and a variety of ways to go from being a casual checker-inner to becoming a committed fan. You build a committed online fan base and that translates to better attendance, better participation in pro-ams, better ratings, better coverage, and (eventually) better sponsorships, tv deals, and overall revenues. If Barack Obama was the first Presidential candidate to really get the possibilities of new media, why shouldn't the LPGA aim to become the first professional golf tour to replicate his success?

I would love to see the LPGA striving to break the 35-event barrier in 2010 for the first time since 2001 (rather than scrambling to avoid breaking 30 in the other direction) and laying the groundwork for the best decade in their history. They certainly have the young talent already on tour and on their way to provide compelling competition as the Ochoa Era enters its post-Sorenstam phase. Now they need to figure out how to provide them more and better venues and more and better-informed coverage.

OK, This Is Just Embarrassing for the LPGA

I thought I was Ai Miyazato's biggest fan in the U.S., but apparently someone in the LPGA media department beats me hands-down. From their October 6 news for the week page:

Miyazato wins on JLPGA.
Third-year Tour member Ai Miyazato recorded a win on the LPGA of Japan at the Japan Women's Open this past weekend. Miyazato (73-76-68-67=284, -4) edged out South Korea's Esther Lee (74-71-72-68=285, -3) by just one stroke at Shiun Golf Club in Niigata Prefecture. Momoko Ueda (77-74-68-70), a 2008 LPGA Tour rookie, tied for seventh at 1-over-par 289 with Sakura Yokomine (74-75-71-69).

Last I checked, Ji-Hee Lee birdied the final hole to beat Ai-chan.

My guess is someone misread breitbart.com's results page, which always is badly formatted. Look, I can understand not reading Mostly Harmless. But skipping Daniel Wexler and Hound Dog, not to mention Golfweek? That's criminal!

Paging Carolyn Bivens

Thanks to Geoff Shackelford and Ryan Ballengee for calling my attention to the Carolyn Bivens interview with Beth Ann Baldry and the Ron Sirak story that contains quotes from the Commissioner on the new and as yet unformed English proficiency requirement for LPGA membership. I thought I was done writing about this when I closed out my little trilogy on the subject. But I should have known better. A blog named after a Douglas Adams novel is probably doomed to stretch the meaning of the word "trilogy." (Guess I've got another post on this coming, then.)

You see, Bivens made this personal with this western New York blogger when her office leaked that the straw that broke the camel's back came (according to Sirak) "when Eun-Hee Ji won the Wegmans LPGA in June and was unable to deliver the victory speech in English." I'm assuming we'll soon be hearing angry denials from both Wegmans and the tournament organizers--who have secured professors and students from the University of Rochester's Simon School as translators, footed the bill for tournament webcasts and made a huge deal about their Asian viewership, and generally welcomed international players with open arms--that they had anything to do with the policy. Ji herself is taking one for the team, saying to the Korean media, "At the time, I spoke Korean in the interview. I experienced pricks of conscience as I felt if the latest decision targets me. I'll pay more attention to improving my English." But why should the top player in the LPGA's Class of 2007 feel guilty?

With apologies to Adams fans everywhere, I offer the following Hitchhiker's Guide to the LPGA's defense of its language policy.

1. It's good for the tour's bottom line.

The Commissioner mentions that "The more the audience knows about the business model of the LPGA, the more likely they are to be in agreement." Really? Let's review the reasoning. Futures Tour communications guru Lisa Mickey breaks it down for us:

Sponsors and pro-am participants pay money for personal encounters with professionals on the golf course. For sponsors, golf tournaments are an advertising tool and a corporate entertainment tool. The LPGA’s Kraft Nabisco Championship, for example, is a well-established way for food and grocery vendors to network against the backdrop of a professional golf tournament alongside top women golf pros.

Plenty of corporate sponsors align themselves with the NBA and NFL, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will go one-on-one with Kobe or run downfield for a bomb from Brett Favre. Golf is unique and personal and when people are spending money in this environment, they do it for the chance to spend five or so hours on a golf course with a real playing professional. At the end of the day, if that pro hasn’t been able to utter a single “Nice shot,” then the odds are pretty high that the amateur spending substantial dollars won’t be back next year. Too much of that hurts the tournament. Enough of that hurts the tour.

The LPGA certainly has embraced its global membership and its global membership has made it a much more interesting tour, but while professional golf may be fun and games to the public, it is still, at the end of the day, a business. And, as mentioned before, this business depends solely on the personal satisfaction of check writers based on their experiences with the pros. If the pros can’t communicate, the experience is not a valid return on investment for those individuals sponsoring events and playing in pro-ams. Pro-ams and sponsorships secure tournament purses. Without the purses, there are no tournaments. And without tournaments, there are no tours.

Sounds good. Never mind that the reason some pros may not utter a single "nice shot" in an entire pro-am round may have more to do with the quality of their playing partners' games than their own language abilities. Never mind that a certain number of pro-am participants may actually know other languages than English. Never mind that there are no threats of suspensions for the English-speaking pros who may happen to be introverted, misanthropic, or just having a bad day. Consider the following major problems with Mickey's logic:

a) "this business depends solely on the personal satisfaction of check writers based on their experiences with the pros": if true, this is an alarming admission, but it's most likely an overstatement. That "solely" there implies that the LPGA isn't making a significant amount of money from its Korean and Japanese TV deals, which is either untrue or suggests that the LPGA isn't counting on any decent American TV deal to sweeten their pot from check writers who base their decisions on projected ratings and advertising revenues, not on their "personal satisfaction" with pros.

But even if Mickey meant "primarily," there are still serious problems with her logic. Consider the LPGA's range of possible responses to sponsors who have problems with the language abilities of a certain small percentage of pros on tour.

i) "We have excellent English instruction programs in place and our players are embracing them. We guarantee this problem will go away. In the meantime, we'll ask the player(s) in question to offer you their personal apologies."
ii) "We're teaming up with with our tournament organizers to fund a team of interpreters from neighboring colleges and universities for every event on tour so that this kind of isolated incident remains one."
iii) "We're sorry your employees and clients have such a problem with some of our international players. Perhaps we can recommend some diversity management training that we've benefitted from ourselves."
iv) "We're sorry you no longer wish to sponsor this tournament. We're sure there will be no negative local, regional, national, or international backlash against your brand if we had to answer questions from the media about why you've withdrawn your sponsorship."

Sure, sticking to your guns and defending all your players might cause you to lose a sponsorship or 2. But you don't need a Ph.D. to recognize that you can offset those losses with new tournaments in places with potential sponsors, pro-am participants, and fans who would be excited to be associated with a young, hot, and global professional golf tour. There must be some companies that want to get their brands better known in Asia and Latin America somewhere in the United States. At the very least, you might consult the latest census for concentrations of Latin American and Asian immigrant and ethnic American populations. You know, places where non-U.S.-based multinationals and transnationals might want to expand their markets? And where tournament organizers may see increased ticket sales?

b) "If the pros can’t communicate, the experience is not a valid return on investment for those individuals sponsoring events and playing in pro-ams": If this is true of events in predominantly English-speaking areas of the United States, then it must be equally true of events in Quebec, Mexico, France, Japan, Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and China. So when will we see monolingual American players being asked--no, wait, required--to sacrifice their time and effort for the tour's bottom line? As I wrote earlier, "Being able to get by in 2 or more languages is the norm the world over. In reality, it's the monolingual English speakers who need the carrot and stick to venture outside our little world. If we're not willing to legislate it for ourselves, why not leave learning English to economic forces and individual choices like we do with almost everything else?"

But why wouldn't the LPGA be willing to require a minimal level of proficiency in at least one non-English language? Are they perhaps worried that such a policy might be controversial with the public, unpopular with the players, difficult to enact or enforce, risk defections to and fewer Q-School applications from those on other tours, and even open up a competitive advantage for others who might take the opportunity to challenge their monopoly?

Why would they be? After all...

2. It's good for the players.

Mickey dangles the carrot:

I doubt that anyone would argue that it is to the [dis]advantage of any player to learn the language of the land where she intends to play. When New Yorker Jean Bartholomew decided to play golf on the Japan LPGA (JLPGA) before she was a U.S.-based LPGA member, she knew part of the equation to her success--and survival--was learning to speak Japanese. Jean learned Japanese and can still converse in the language. The same has been true of such LPGA players as Lorena Ochoa of Mexico, France’s Patricia Meunier-Lebouc, Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam, Paraguay’s Julieta Granada and South Korea’s Jeong Jang. Each learned English and has been able to communicate effectively as LPGA members.... The goal is for every player on the LPGA to easily converse with pro-am partners and tournament sponsors, to effectively communicate basic thoughts about their rounds to media, and to have the ability to express their thoughts and thanks during tournament award ceremonies. What, I ask, is unfair about that?

Bivens wields the stick:

"If these players don't take this step [and learn English], their ability to earn a living is reduced. They will be cut out of corporate and endorsement opportunities. I can't imagine that someone who has thought this through does not realize that in opposing this measure they are penalizing the very people they are trying to help."

Never mind that Mickey has never read Multilingual America, much less figured out that the U.S. has no official language. Or that there's nothing unfair about the goal as she describes it--so long as it really applies to all players in any LPGA event. Or that there's a difference between opposing the goal and opposing the penalty. Or that Bivens's hiking the penalty for non-compliance does more to reduce international players' ability to earn their living on the LPGA than any lack of corporate or sponsorship opportunities (the substantial ones of which so far seem to be heading mostly to players named Wie, Gulbis, and Creamer, anyway--and took even Annika many years to earn).

No, the basic problem is with forcing players to do what's good for them. It was Annika and Lorena who set the bar on fitness, not Carolyn Bivens. And it should be Se Ri Pak who sets the bar for the South Koreans who followed her to the LPGA when it comes to English. If you don't trust Se Ri, why not get out of the business of evaluating English proficiency by making LPGA and Futures Tour Q-Schools open only to graduates of U.S. colleges and universities? Isn't a college education good for everyone? And doesn't the U.S. have the best higher education system in the world?

Don't like this solution? Ah, enjoy wading through the USCIS website to figure out whether golfers should be held to the same standards as health professionals or physical therapists.

First drug testing, now language testing. What's next? Don't get me wrong: I'm in favor of drug testing done right. Not only can it help prevent harm to players, but it also helps level the playing field and head off a bodily enhancement arms race (so to speak). The only harm to players for not being multilingual is to their pocketbooks, not their bodies, while the only competitive disadvantage that could possibly come from not knowing English depends on it being the only language golf balls understand.

But don't mind me. After all...

3. People who don't like the policy are overreacting out of ignorance or political bias.

Wait a second: who was it who decided to tell only the Korean players on tour about a policy that hadn't then even been fully formulated--and won't be until December? Who was it who's been offering weak justifications for it--and then mostly through back channels?

As for suggestions from the LPGA office that opinions have been split along Red State/Blue State lines and that the tour will become a political football for Fox News and the New York Times, that dog just won't hunt: language politics cuts across party lines and divides parties. But hey, way to lend credence to your critics' worst fears: not only that you can't figure out how to market the LPGA's international talent to all Americans (taking advantage of "land of opportunity," "model minority," "diversity," and "globalization" scripts, not to mention the higher percentage of devout Christians among the Korean contingent), but more important that you really are reaching out to the English-only movement, that you really do see nativists as a priority demographic to target, and that you're desperate enough to hope this half-baked scheme will help your TV contract negotiations.

The irony in all this is that I still believe the LPGA will tweak its policy by December to address the widespread concerns over its implementation and penalties, so I'm still reserving judgment on its final form. The tragedy is that they've shown themselves more liable to direct friendly fire toward the messenger than to actually engage in that dialogue they say they want.

[Update 1 (3:33 pm): Here's LPGA.com's announcement from Commissioner Bivens and Geoff Shackelford's response to an accompanying memo from Bivens. What do you all think now?]

[Update 2 (3:39 pm): Here's Ryan Ballengee's response to the Sirak story. Hound Dog's comments can be found on the Inside the LPGA podcast.]

[Update 3 (9/3/08, 1:36 am): Too much work to do to listen to HD's podcast for awhile yet (much less Ryan Ballengee's), but his latest post goes out of the way to be fair to the LPGA brass. Too bad the Bivens offensive hasn't gone over so well with State Farm. Still waiting to hear something from Wegmans.]

[Update 4 (2:24 am): From what I've seen on the web, the Golf Channel coverage has been quite fair to the LPGA. For all the hints of sensationalization, PC, and "liberal media" coming out of the LPGA office, the questions and concerns raised sound pretty sensible to me.]

[Update 5 (9/4/08, 11:52 am): Geoff Shackelford connects the dots.]

If a Lee Wins in NW Arkansas, Does It Make a Sound?

Woo, Anthony Kim! You're no Seon Hwa Lee, but nice win, anyway. Still, it's painful to watch Kim become the golfy media's Official Tiger Challenger du jour while Lee gets the silent treatment.

Part of the problem is that the AP hasn't replaced Doug Ferguson with a regular who has broad knowledge of the LPGA, but instead has gone with sub after sub from week to week. Noah Trister's final-round piece is certainly serviceable (and much better than Ferguson's typical phone-it-in effort from last season), but it fails to put Lee's win in perspective: 4th in her less-than-3-year career, 3rd in the past calendar year (behind only Lorena Ochoa, tied with Paula Creamer and Annika Sorenstam, and ahead of Mi Hyun Kim and Suzann Pettersen), it helped her cross the $3M mark in career winnings and come less than $10K shy of the $1M mark in season winnings. Even basic identifiers like 2005 Futures Tour money leader and 2006 LPGA Rookie of the Year are missing.

How about Brian Hewitt? He knows the LPGA pretty well, having broken a story about the strains between former best friends Inbee and Angela Park just last week. This week, he writes: "Anthony Kim now joins Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Kenny Perry on the short list of players who have won more than once on the PGA TOUR this year. That’s fast company." And joining Ochoa, Sorenstam, and Creamer as repeat winners on the LPGA Tour this season is, what? Not worth mentioning, apparently.

Jason Sobel's Weekly 18 has nothing on the LPGA despite his having written this after Lee's first win of the season:

After the firm of Ochoa, Sorenstam & Creamer swiped 11 of the first dozen LPGA titles of the year, we've now seen new champions in each of the past two weeks. Following Leta Lindley's victory at the Corning, Seon Hwa Lee took down Karrie Webb when the Hall of Famer missed a short putt on the second playoff hole at the Ginn Tribute presented by Annika--Lee's third win in as many seasons on tour.

And this might be only the tip of the iceberg for Lee. Three years ago, she was the leading money-winner on the developmental Futures Tour and she also owns three other international victories as a pro. At 20th in the Rolex Rankings prior to her win, don't be surprised to see the South Korea native in the top 10 and maybe even top five by year's end.

Jason, here's a little hint. An "I told you so" is warranted after making a prediction like that (one which I fully endorse, having picked her back in January to be #3 at season's end).

Which raises the question: does anybody check out LPGA.com before they file their Sunday commentary? No, wait, don't answer. I'm sure if new American Angela Park had followed up her tournament-record 62 on Saturday with a win Sunday or if American Jane Park's matching final-round 62 had held up, we'd be seeing the same kind of adulation as Anthony Kim is getting. Sure!

[Update 1 (9:43 am): Hound Dog takes the high road in his tournament epilogue, but his points about Lee's standing still hit home.]

[Update 2 (10:10 am): Ryan Ballengee updated his post on Lee's 2nd win of 2008 partially in response to this one. Those who have followed our exchange in the comments here may be interested in my comments on his post.]

[Update 3 (7/8/08, 12:12 am): Ballengee does a great job in his 7/7 LPGA radio show!]

Paging Steve Elling...Again

I have no problem with Steve Elling touting Lorena Ochoa's chances for a Grand Slam or encouraging her to play the PGA event in Mexico someday--heck, I even agree with his main points--but I do have a big problem when he and his critics share the same flawed assumption about the "depth of competition" on the LPGA. In Elling's case, it's the hint that Ochoa is going to find the ease of winning on the LPGA so boring that she'll need to provide herself with a new challenge that I find so infuriating. In Davis's case, it's the fact that he took the time to research Woods, Sorenstam, and Ochoa's records but left his closing jab--"the fact that two players have dominated the LPGA to such a degree almost concurrently says nearly as much about the lack of depth in the women's game as it does about their individual greatness"--unsupported and apparently unresearched. So let me spell this out simply for the golf journalists of the world.

It's because the quality of competition on the LPGA has gone up that Ochoa's run is so impressive. Not only is it going to get tougher for her dominance to continue in the coming years as more and more seasoned pros from other tours and competition-tested amateurs from around the world join the LPGA and as more Young Guns gain experience and confidence. But it's also that no single player can remain so in the zone over a long period of time that she can face down every single other player who happens to get in the zone for a week or 3. Remember, in the second-weakest field of the year, Ochoa had one terrible round and couldn't chase down the winner--a rookie, and not even the strongest in her class--in the 36 holes remaining to her. Sure, Ochoa can win with her B-game, but not at the rate she has been.

After the Stanford International is over, I'll address this issue in more depth with updated Best of the LPGA and Young Guns rankings. But one test of my hypothesis is to check in on Ochoa's week off and see just how much competition Annika Sorenstam gets this week....

[Update (4/26/08): Mulligan Stu has come up with an interesting twist on the Ochoa/Woods meme, but that Elling assumption trips him up, IMHO.]

Tokyo from Memory

Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic artist who loves to draw panoramic views of cities. In this video he draws a panorama of Tokyo from memory; drawing starts at about 3 minutes in.

Make It Dragon Ash in 2008

Amazing discovery today about the Full Metal Archivist's musical tastes. I came home very late from picking up the girls--for which I have to thank Ari, bw, Vance Maverick, and Harriet Beecher Stowe--only to discover that she's into j-punk! Specifically, a group that goes by the name of Dragon Ash. You know what's coming next, right?



Yup, that's her favorite song. Too close to Sugar Ray for me, but it's a start.

Here's why this is so exciting. If you check my profile, you'll see I'm into music in a big way, but most of it the Full Metal Archivist is not so into. So if I start her on The Offspring, move into Green Day, then back to some of the classic punk albums, I might just be able to get to to hear the connection between them and, say, Primus, Mos Def, and, if I need to fall back on them, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Next step: Tool sounds a lot better to her. Happiness reigns in the Constructivist household and onechan and imoto are brought up right, musically speaking, of course.

Heh, I can't wait till I can say, "I love it when an 'imposing my musical canons on those I love' plan comes together!" Or, if it fails, "Would you believe...?"