Latest sign of LPGA self-destruction? Commish Bivens aims to put Twitter in play

Bivens = brand unawareness. (AP/Damian Dovarganes)

Carolyn Bivens is clueless about sports.

The LPGA commissioner’s latest idea to draw attention to her foundering tour is to have players post messages on Twitter during competition.

“I’d love it if players Twittered during the middle of a round,” Bivens told Bloomberg.com yesterday. “The new media is very important to the growth of golf and we view it as a positive, and a tool to be used.”

Brilliant.

That’s just what golf needs, another way to make the game slower than it already is. 

But, hey, what could be more compelling for TV viewers than to watch players tap out messages on their iPhones between shots?

The diversion from the task at hand no doubt will produce some dandy scores, too.

And who cares if exchanging Tweets would constitute a blatant violation of the Rules of Golf? Between clubs? Just Tweet a query about what the players up ahead have been using. (“6- or 5-iron at 16^th?”) Unsure how much that 20-foot putt will break? No problem. (“3 balls outside on this?”)

Bivens is all about branding. Which is fine, unless you don’t understand your brand.

She obviously doesn’t.

Bivens is intent upon marketing her players’ personalities, appearance and supposed hip-ness in the staid world of golf. What she continually fails to grasp – or worse, chooses to disregard – is that the LPGA is an athletic endeavor.

Yes, pro sports exist to entertain. But they do so by showcasing athletic skill, the will to win, the surmounting of obstacles and (apologies to the late Jim McKay) the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

The allure of sports transcends technology. It can’t be captured in 140 characters.

Granted, Bivens rightly wants to exploit advances in communications such as Twitter to better keep the LPGA’s fan base informed. That’s being done in men’s golf thanks to a proliferation of on-course Twitterers representing PGATour.com, Masters.com, GolfChannel.com and ESPN.com, just to name a few. And it's accomplished without compromising the integrity of the competition. 

“For Morgan Pressel and Christina Kim’s following – her fans are 12-, 13-, 14-year-old girls and boys – they’re not waiting for the golf broadcast on Saturday and Sunday,” Bivens told Bloomberg. “They want to know what’s going on in the middle of the round. If we’re going to get out of the collared shirts and khaki pants and make golf chic, hip, happening, Christina Kim is exactly the kind of player to reach out and make golf a lot more relevant.”

Make golf more relevant?

Relevant to what?

It’s a sport, Carolyn. People watch to see who wins. If players don’t mind Tweeting during a round, even if it were permissible under the Rules, then they must not want to win badly enough.

And that would be a death knell for the LPGA.