Posted on 07/09/2009 10:45:46 AM PDT by Brookhaven
As the best female golfers on the planet tee off at the U.S. Women’s Open in Bethlehem, PA, many viewers will not be tuning in to enjoy Lorena Ochoa’s fluid swing, Paula Creamer’s short game, or root on New Englanders Alison Walshe, Brittany Altomare, Anna Grzebien, and Briana Vega. They will instead be ogling the ongoing soap opera that the LPGA has become.
There are many reasons for concern about the women’s golf tour. The lousy economy and unpopular leadership style of Commissioner Carolyn Bivens are culprits one and two. Golf World’s Ron Sirak reports that five of the seven players on the LPGA board of directors want to oust Bivens, and player Suzann Pettersen has gone public with her dissent. So it seems safe to assume Bivens’ days with the tour are numbered.
Mutiny on the golf course. Golfweek’s Beth Ann Baldry reports that leading LPGA players -- including Ochoa, Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Cristie Kerr, and Natalie Gulbis -- met July 2 to discuss the tour’s ever-shrinking schedule and their lack of confidence in Bivens. Several participants sent a letter to the LPGA board of directors asking Bivens to resign.
The timing of the players’ mutiny could not have been worse. Speculation about Bivens’ imminent “resignation” now overshadows the premier event on the women’s golf schedule. Too bad the players did not air their grievances earlier, as sponsors began falling away, or wait until, as Sirak calls it, the “media black hole” following the Open. The next U.S. women's tournament is not until mid-August.
Tight-lipped. Players, as well as the Tournament Owners Association, say they are leaving the matter up to the board. Trying to keep a lid on things, the LPGA shut down the sports-news ticker on its Web page shortly after word of the players’ resignation demands began scrolling.
Like no one would notice?
“You can rest assured that the LPGA and its Board of Directors considers any topic raised by the players seriously since we are a player organization,” says LPGA spokesperson David Higdon in an email. “There are always differences of opinion on business matters, and as they arise, we resolve them as best we can in order to further the business of the LPGA.”
Most of the players who helped roil the tsunami of protest last week are now mum on the issue. Kerr began a USGA news conference by reading from a prepared statement in which she said she has “no official capacity” to “comment on matters pertaining to the LPGA operations.” Instead, she invited reporters to ask about her golf and “wine making.”
Wine making? Really?
Pettersen tells Baldry that the letter spoke for “the majority of players,” and that by signing she was “standing up for our tour.” But Christina Kim, a player director on the board, says the LPGA problems are not “due to any one person or occurrence,” according to Baldry. And retired player Rosie Jones tells Baldry that canning Bivens may not solve the LPGA’s problems.
Sirak believes the “situation” will be resolved by Monday. “To move forward,” he writes in a Twitter posting, “must be done deal.” But with Bivens an apparent no-show at the Open, perhaps the continuing drama will finally take a back seat to the real show -- spectacular golf at a championship venue.
Can we just play golf? At 6,740 yards and playing to a par of 71, Saucon Valley Country Club is a challenge for even the best women golfers. It certainly favors long, accurate ball strikers. Observers believe that two par-4 holes, 10 and 15, may be drivable, at least during the final round, when 15 will play at 257 yards.
Six-foot-wide swaths of intermediate rough set to 1.5 inches border either side of the fairways, which are 25 yards to 35 yards wide. The greens will be fun (for viewers, anyway), running at about 12 to 12.5 on the Stimpmeter. And with a course rating of 79.8 and slope of 145, Saucon Valley sets up as a rigorous test for the 156 players teeing off today.
The field includes 31 players who earned their way through qualifying rounds, and 28 amateurs. Only 60 will make the cut. Marquee players Gulbis and Michelle Wie are not playing this week, having failed to qualify. But a testament to the present and future of women’s golf, as Golfweek’s James Achenbach points out, are the 33 players who are teenagers and 10 who are in their 40s.
Your U.S. Women’s Open leaders, at 1-under after eight holes, include Kerr, Mika Miyazato, Eun Hee Ji, and Hee Young Park. New England golfers Vega and Altomare are one over after four, and two over after five holes, respectively. Walshe and Grzebien tee off this afternoon. Click here for the full leaderboard and individual players’ scorecards.
Part of the problem is the foreign Asian players routinely win over half the tournaments and occupy over half the top 20 finishers in any tournament.
Most of the sponsors are white. Most of the US population is white, black or hispanic with only about 5% of the population asian. Americans get tired of watching a foreigner and particularly a foreigner of a different race taking home the trophy all the time.
The lpga needs to have US players and in particular US caucasian players to start playing a lot better.
I don’t think that is the problem.
I think it’s the same problem the WNBA has: they’re good, but they just are as good as the men professionals.
The bottom half of the PGA would crush the top half of the LPGA.
Maybe it’s just me, but I could care less if a foreigner wins, especially if she’s cute and she can play, or even if she has a distinctive personality like John Daly. I think they should play better known courses. Can you imagine how many people would watch a women’s tournament at Augusta, or even Pebble Beach?
professional sports is about entertainment as it is about the sport.
Any time there are too many asians on a tv show, americans change the channel and on the lpga tv show, there are too many asians for america’s liking.
Um ... the bottom half of the ranked junior men amateurs in Florida (or Virginia or Georgia) would crush the top half of the LPGA if everyone played from the tips.
Lorena is getting married at the end of the season.
Personally, I would rather not watch women who are obnoxious drunks.
I thought Bivens was a disaster in the making, when they hired her. Now if they could just talk Annika into becoming an interim Commissioner (for a year or two), she could probably straighten it out.
The USGA plans to hold the US Open and US Women's Open, back to back, at Pinehurst No. 2, in 2014.
I had no idea there was that level of hostility to asians in the USA.
In fact, I don’t think that is the issue.
I think the fact the female players, of all races, suck is the issue.
Have met Paula in person in Hawaii - a real sweetie. She has creamy smooth complexion for those who do not have HDTV.
There is not “hostility” to asians in the USA. It is more a lack of affection that entertainers need that in the USA.
That is entertainers/media personalities need affection and for asians, it is not there.
There are no organized boycotts of lpga, it is indifference and the indifference is in part due to foreign asians dominating the tour.
The indifference would not be there if whites were winning.
Ditto for tv shows in general. Put too many asians on and americans stop watching due to indifference but they do not actively campaign against it.
Okay, I’m in as long as they wear those outfits on the course :)
Well, that young lady certainly seems excited about the game! :=)
That's a powerful committee. The LPGA needs more players like them and fewer with no personality.
I know you two USA cheerleaders like to think there is not a racist bone in any Americans’ bodies. Well check out this link from cbssportsline,
http://www.cbssports.com/golf/story/11945671
“Bivens’ tenure also saw a huge rise in the number of Korean players on her tour, up to 47 now, with another 35 playing on the Duramed Futures Tour. And while many of them also are talented and photogenic, they have not exactly been embraced by American golf fans, most of whom don’t know one of the 10 Kims in the field this week from the seven Lees also entered in the Open.
Former LPGA player Jan Stephenson, who let it be known this week she would love to replace Bivens as commissioner, once was properly excoriated for saying publicly that Asians were “killing women’s golf” and calling for quotas to limit their number on the LPGA Tour. She later apologized, saying she “did not intend to make it a racial issue.”
And yet, it’s an issue that remains the Ugly American elephant in the big tent of women’s golf, a sport that clearly needs U.S. players to push up to the highest reaches of the world rankings, the better to attract domestic corporate money to their sport and lucrative endorsement contracts to their personal bank accounts.”
The other nice thing about the South Koreans is they are good athletes without looking masculine. And how Jan Stephenson managed to swing around her chest, I’ll never know.
“I know you two USA cheerleaders like to think there is not a racist bone in any Americans’ bodies.”
I am well aware there is ampke racism in America.
The endless threads on how stupid Jews are come to mind personally.
The fact that 96% of blacks voted for Obama over Hillary also comes to mind.
As does Sotomayor, the tan bigot.
As does Colin Powel, the taupe bigot.
But I still had no idea it applied to ladies golf.
Just surprising.
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