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Marsha, Marsha, Marsha
I guess this essentially makes Carolyn Bivens some sort of jealous, Jan Brady type. Bivens, hustled out the door with a quick boot to the backside after a player revolt, left the LPGA in a sorry state and Marsha Evans was left to clean up the economic carnage. According to reports, Bivens had secured nine tournaments for 2010 when she was given the heave. Last week in Texas, Evans rolled out the 2010 schedule, which contains 24 stops. Funny how your mind works, but when Evans, a former Naval officer, was installed as the interim commissioner, she sounded like another brassy type used to barking orders at cowering underlings (hey, it's the military mindset, no?). Instead, she is being roundly saluted as a calming influence who reconnected with alienated sponsors and brought them back into the fold at a time when they were desperately needed. With an awful economy and the singed feelings created by her predecessor, Evans must have felt like she was lobbing spitwads at battleships, but she capably set the table for the transition to her successor, Mike Whan. All things considered, graduating from Annapolis was probably easier.
Oasis in the desert
As expected, the reports from abroad at the inaugural Race to Dubai finale in the United Arab Emirates were frank, analytical and critical (we could almost smell the stench emanating from the pond on the sixth hole, thanks to the colorful newspaper descriptions). From afar, as in our couches here in the States, the European Tour's maiden points race seemed a stirring success. Lee Westwood on Sunday won the double-W -- he claimed the tournament title as well as the season-long bonus for topping the money list -- and the plot was full of top-tier players. Most of the criticism centered on Dubai itself, which is sort of like panning the stage while ignoring the performances of the actors. The homes surrounding the Earth course were empty and half-completed. The course itself, hardly a gem according to most accounts, was barely finished in time. The Dubai backdrop was full of empty skyscrapers and idle construction cranes. But as far as the golf competition proper, it had far fewer hitches than the first season of the U.S. tour's convoluted and contrived FedEx Cup, which to this day remains hard for many fans to grasp. Whether the five-year R2D contract with Dubai will run its course is anybody's guess, since the prize monies were already slashed 25 percent because of the slumping city's economy. But after Year 1, it seems like money well spent.
Wie are the world
Tiger Woods won in Australia, Steve Ames won the PGA Tour season finale in a playoff, and yet, neither was the most popular tournament according to the votes logged by clicks of the remote control. The victory by Michelle Wie, televised on a tape-delay basis or not, had double the viewers of the PGA Tour event at Disney World, which underscores what we've been saying all along about the 20-year-old: Root for her or against her, but at least you care enough to watch. Wie has what the LPGA sorely needs -- an established identity. She's already one of the most recognized female sports figures in the world. When she made it through LPGA Q-school last year, the tour elected to treat and promote her like the other rookies, with no extra fanfare or hoopla. Now that Wie has won and the economy had tanked, the LPGA better move her to the front of the promotional line. No matter how she plays, people watch. That's the hardest half of the marketing battle to win, and that part has already been accomplished.
It's not in the cards
Sometimes, the wisest course of action is to do nothing, and no, this isn't a rant about slow play. The European Tour executive board last week elected not to pursue a new proposal that would have required its members to tee it up at a combination of select events next year, an attempt to get the top players to compete in key summer tournaments in Europe rather than bailing for the States. The European stars with cards on both the European and PGA tours, world-class Ryder Cup players like Justin Rose and Padraig Harrington, hardly greeted the proposal enthusiastically, and the E-tour clearly saw the risk of alienating even more top players that it cannot stand to lose. "We've spoken to our sponsors to say we felt it was the wrong time to introduce something like this," E-Tour official David Garland told Reuters last week. There has to be a better way. Strong-arming players and repeatedly tinkering with eligibility rules is the riskiest proposition of all. It can push, not pull. Recession or not, there's way more purse money in the States. The whole notion of establishing required tournaments is anathema to the professional tour system. Besides, the E-tour already has leverage in that, unlike its American counterpart, it allows appearance fees to be paid.
Reach for the Sky
At the time the contracts were signed three years ago, the money was too irresistible to pass up. At least, for the PGA Tour brass, the dollars on the table made up for the ridiculous lack of market penetration. The tour signed a mega-money deal with Setanta Sports, a high-end sports network in the United Kingdom that has almost no subscribers compared to established sports giant Sky Sports, formerly the tour carrier. Well, 2½ years into the Setanta deal, the broadcaster went broke because not enough folks were forking over enough pounds and Euros to sustain it. The tour argues that it still made as much money with the rights fees already paid in the Setanta deal as it would have earned over a longer-term contract for less annual cash with Sky, but it lost millions of prime-time U.K. viewers in the process. Monday, the tour rebuilt its bridge with Sky Sports and inked an eight-year deal that will broadcast the U.S. tour in prime time to its 6 million viewers. According to the tour, Setanta and its partners had a shade over 3 million subscribers when it rolled over and croaked. Terms were not announced, but sometimes, spreading the gospel to the masses is more important than a few extra quid here or there.
Here comes the kid
OK, now it's really official. Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy is coming to America, where you can bet the fans will welcome him with open arms and wallets. For good reason, we scribe types have carefully detailed the potential pitfalls of taking up membership on two tours, especially at age 20, and McIlroy's own management group has long been resistant to the notion. But the potential upside is even more invigorating. McIlroy, who Monday moved to No. 10 in the world ranking after finishing second a day earlier on the final E-Tour money list, showed last spring that he can play anyplace, anytime, with anybody. Heck, he made the cut in all four majors. The early reviews show he has the chops to someday unseat the reigning world No. 1. For that to happen, he needs to more than get his feet wet on U.S. soil. The two biggest European warhorses in recent years, Lee Westwood and Colin Montgomerie, combined to win one PGA Tour event. Had they played here more frequently, of course, that surely would have changed and they would have been held in much higher esteem. In fact, depending on how often he plays, McIlroy looks like a cinch to win in the States at some point in 2010.
Down
Skeds on the skids
Like a big bowl of Texas chili, the aftertaste of the LPGA's 2010 schedule announced last week in Houston is coming back to haunt me. To wit, it continues to boggle my mind that the organizations running the major world tours can't somehow swallow their egos and more properly coordinate their schedules in the coming years. The first three women's majors next year either precede or directly follow the biggest men's events in golf -- the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open. The LPGA is playing a scant 24 tournaments next year, which means the organization has more than half the season off, yet it can't find better slots where top events don't essentially overlap with massive majors in the men's game? Part of the beauty of the European Tour's Race to Dubai finale is that it follows the majors and the FedEx Cup series in the States, and is contested after the U.S. season ends. It has an unadulterated spotlight. The women? The LPGA held its season finale this week, too, in Houston, and hardly anybody noticed. Golf coverage revolves around the men's majors, which cast a large shadow. The LPGA needs all the sunlight it can muster.
Stop me if you've heard this one before
So, Padraig Harrington was leading last weekend in Dubai when, all of a sudden, it looked like he was back playing in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and not the middle of a darned desert. Harrington, just as he did at the PGA Championship, had two water balls on the same hole in Dubai, albeit when he was leading in the first round. Off the top of my head, Harrington absorbed crucial penalty shots either for water balls, unplayable lies or out-of-bounds shots at the Bridgestone Invitational, the PGA Championship, Deutsche Bank and BMW Championship. There's almost no way to track this formally, but he had to have been assessed more penalty strokes in big events in the past three months than Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood combined -- all while contending for titles. After a dismal year of fiddling with swing mechanics, every time he put himself in contention late in the year, he needed a life vest or a chainsaw to find his ball. He's one guy who's glad to see 2009 come to a merciful end.
Will that be a round-trip ticket, or one-way?
The statement didn't get much traction last week, but we wanted to shinny something up the readership flagpole here to see if anybody sees any potential merit to this plan, or pure media spin. Mike Whan, who is set to take over as LPGA commissioner in January, doesn't seem to have the same concerns with staging 11 of the tour's 24 events in foreign locales in 2010. "There is definitely room for more domestic events. It is fair for people to be concerned about that. But I would say that I think people in general are struggling with the globalization of the LPGA Tour," Whan said. "One of the things I'm going to try and do is help people to not only get over that trouble but to embrace globalization of the tour." OK, so he's new and the LPGA is in no position to turn down events anywhere, but I'd wager that the average golf fan sees this as a roadmap to ruin and irrelevance. Overseas scores don't make the morning paper. Events are not broadcast live, if at all. The paucity of American winners has created a growing disconnect with domestic fans already, and the offshore trend will only accentuate it. Embrace globalization as a solution? I'd rather wrap my arms around a barrel cactus. How can the rank-and-file players afford to play in places like Thailand, Singapore, China, Japan and Korea when the 100th player on the money list has earned $72,000? They could make the cut and lose money. With 46 percent of its tournaments headed outside the U.S. border, they are reaching the tipping point. Tipping is not a city in China.
Norman's vision quite likely has teeth
No prominent player over the years has been more critical of the PGA Tour and commissioner Tim Finchem than Greg Norman, which doesn't mean that Sharky hasn't made some valid points along the way. Months ago, Norman was the first to suggest that the major tours roll back purses as a show of good faith to title sponsors who are hurting, but Finchem resolutely continues to hold their feet to the fire, signed contracts in hand. Last week, Norman said the prize money going forward is certain to decrease, and as evidenced by the PGA Tour's inability to find a sponsor for the Torrey Pines event (formerly the Buick Invitational) that annually includes Woods and Mickelson in the field, it's hard to dispute his crystal ball. "It's not going to be like it used to be," Norman said. "I think players, when everybody was taking cuts in their employment, cuts in salary, I actually made the comment, to make golf look good and responsible to what's happening with the rest of the world, maybe [players] should be, too. I hate the players to look recession-proof." With two more title sponsors leaving after 2010 and another 10 contracts with title or presenting companies set to expire, that day of reckoning could soon be at hand.
