Globalization, not Michelle Wie, will cure LPGA

It took only a week for the Michelle Wie bandwagon to suffer a flat tire. After scoring her breakthrough LPGA victory at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational, Wie withdrew from this week’s LPGA Championship after one round because of a sprained ankle.

I fear this will be a common occurrence for the injury-prone Wie. Even if I’m wrong on that count, I’m unconvinced even a healthy Michelle is the answer to the LPGA’s woes. One victory does not a savior make.

Especially when the woman everyone is banking on still appears to be more driven by celebrity than accomplishment. I doubt she’ll ever develop the mental toughness it takes to win on an increasingly competitive LPGA.

Meanwhile, all the xenophobic gnashing of teeth over the LPGA’s 2010 schedule, which features only 13 tournaments in the United States, and fretting over new commissioner Mike Whan’s plans to further globalize the women’s circuit are symptomatic of so many Americans’ failure to come to grips with reality in the 21^st century.

While I certainly understand esteemed Arizona golf blogger Bill Huffman’s dismay that the LPGA event in Phoenix, which typically drew 100,000 fans for the week, has died, I strongly disagree that Whan’s tact is a “clear-cut path to disaster,” as Huffman suggests.

Fact is, as CBSSports.com’s Steve Elling noted, women’s golf is a “niche sport within a niche sport.” It may have a loyal following, but loyalty doesn’t boost purses or attract sponsors. Why should the LPGA continue to beat its head against a wall when there’s money to be made in Asia, where women’s golf enjoys immense popularity and figures to grow even stronger as the game ascends in China?

As for the American players who whine about the lack of playing opportunities at home, I say either get a real job or hit the competitive accelerator, buy a plane ticket to Asia (with an open-ended return) and do what it takes to win on the road. That’s where the money is. If you want it, go get it.

FYI, here’s the text of a column on the topic I wrote for Asian Golf Monthly magazine (sorry, no link to the article available). It appeared in the September issue:

Fast-forward 10 years to 2019 and the future of women’s professional golf.

The International LPGA is in its seventh season, the result of a 2012 merger between the U.S. LPGA and PGA tours. Certified mastery of a foreign language is mandatory on the women’s circuit, meaning players must be fluent in Mandarin, Korean or Japanese.

Only six ILPGA tournaments are being staged in the United States, two of them mixed pairs events with PGA Tour players. Most of the other 24 competitions are in Asia – including two of the four majors – although Europe is hosting a token handful. The U.S. Women’s Open and Women’s British Open are in a tizzy, having just learned that the China Women’s Open has leapfrogged the Korean Women’s Open by boosting first prize of that major to $1.3 million (U.S.).

ILPGA tournaments, with the exception of the mixed pairs events, begin on Sundays and conclude on Wednesdays, no longer competing for exposure with men’s golf and taking best advantage of the audience for live video streaming on the Internet.

LPGA Tour chief executive TK Pen commutes between offices in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and Hong Kong. He reports directly to fourth-year PGA Tour commissioner Greg Norman. (The Shark replaced Ty Votaw, the latter ousted in a player revolt only three years after succeeding Tim Finchem.)

Only 20 Americans have managed to retain fully exempt status on the ILPGA. The rest compete on the Nationwide Futures Tour, which runs 54-hole events that dovetail at the same venues as the eponymous men’s developmental circuit. The Nationwide Futures Tour also serves to sate the appetite of a dwindling but die-hard contingent of women’s golf fans in the States. (The Japan LPGA, Korean LPGA, Ladies European Tour and China LPGA have similar developmental status, each offering video streaming with regional Internet partners.)

GolfChannel.com charges nominal fees (season subscription or ala cart) for exclusive live video streaming of ILPGA tournaments, but access to live final-round video coverage of Nationwide Futures events is free. The third and fourth rounds of every ILPGA event worldwide are carried live on Golf Channel.  

Have we mentioned that it’s a Solheim Cup year? Yes, the event was resurrected in 2017 following a four-year hiatus in the wake Europe scoring zero points in ’13. Now the Solheim Cup pits the Asia Pacific vs. the Americas & Europe. This year’s match is at the TPC Stadium Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, where Asia Pacific will be looking to retain the Cup it won in Korea two years prior.

                                                               • • • • 

If you think this scenario is far fetched, then you probably didn’t foresee the collapse of General Motors, the election of an African-American as U.S. President, or the appointment of a wise Latino woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, either.

The U.S. PGA Tour missed the boat with men’s golf in Asia, too busy exploiting the Tiger Woods phenomenon to envision a future without him. As a result, it ceded the world’s most populous region to the European Tour, which cleverly took the Asian Tour under its wing in July.

Commissioner Finchem can make amends by rescuing the LPGA. The future of the women’s circuit is in Asia, where it may prove to be as lucrative, perhaps more so, than any venture the U.S. PGA Tour might cobble together on its own.

Otherwise, the LPGA in its current form is unsustainable. Women’s golf has always been a marginal attraction in the United States, overshadowed by a plethora of other sports. For years, the notion that most LPGA players were lesbians made it difficult to attract sponsors. More recently, the influx of Koreans has made potential sponsors wary of supporting a tour that’s dominated by players with whom the average American can’t relate.

Former LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens bravely tried to prod non-Americans to become fluent in English, but her execution of the mandate was clumsy and insensitive. Ultimately, Bivens’ hard-line negotiating style alienated so many sponsors and potential sponsors that her tenure became untenable.

Bivens’ replacement will face the same hurdles. When the economy recovers, women’s golf in America will still be a sponsorship afterthought. And there are no signs that Asian dominance will subside.

As August drew to a close, there were 10 Asians among the LPGA’s top 25 money winners. (Of the eight Americans in the top 25, two coincidentally are Asian Americans.) Jiyai Shin of South Korea held a commanding lead in the Rookie of Year standings. Five Asians were among the top 10 in the LPGA Player of the Year standings.

Meanwhile, nearly as many Asian players (17) as Americans (18) have gained entry to the LPGA via the Duramed Futures Tour since 1999, when the LPGA-Futures affiliation began. Roughly half of the top 25 girls in the American Junior Golf Association, arguably the world’s top circuit for juniors, are Asian or Asian American.

A 19-year-old with dual Korean and American citizenship, Jennifer Song, is a superstar in waiting. Song won this year’s two top prizes in American amateur golf, the U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links championships. She was individual runner-up at the women’s national college championship.

Song is the cross-cultural player of Bivens’ dreams. Her father is an academic at prestigious universities in Korea and America; her mother is a concert pianist and college professor; Jennifer was born in the U.S. but has lived most of her life in South Korea, where she played junior golf; she moves seamlessly between East and West.

But when Song turns professional, she’ll face a difficult choice. Should she compete on an eroding American circuit and endure the indifference, if not hostility, of American fans and media? Or will she be part of an exodus of Asian players to their homelands, where they can reap bigger rewards and compete in familiar surrounds? The latter might please American xenophiles, but the talent drain would relegate the LPGA to second-class status.

That’s when the U.S. PGA Tour rides to the rescue, just in time not only to save the LPGA, but also to bolster its own partnership with Golf Channel, an entity with global aspirations in the digital age.

Sounds like the future to me.