The news is floating everywhere: LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens will soon leave the organization, perhaps as early as next week. This announcement, coming on top of the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open, puts a damper on the tour’s biggest tournament of the season.
Veteran LPGA players Judy Rankin and Dottie Pepper said on The Golf Channel today that with so many sponsors jumping ship in so short amount of time, something had to be done, even though the timing wasn’t ideal.
Many players and fans agree that Bivens has to go. Some, however, disagree. One veteran player told Golf Digest, “She’s gone. It’s just a question of whether it’s a firing or a resignation. And she doesn’t deserve any of it.”
The buck has to stop somewhere, and it is correctly in Bivens’ lap. Finger-pointing will not rebuild the LPGA. Sometimes you have to start over, and that means clearing the ground for a new foundation. That looks exactly like what is going to happen.
How the LPGA will rebuild, how they will land new sponsors, how they will improve and grow is all unknown. As I have written in a four-part series on my golf blog, I don’t believe the LPGA is being marketed well. The on-air broadcasts are fragmented and pedestrian, with no verbal imagery, no story-building, none of that wonderfully improvised melodrama that you hear from the PGA Tour broadcasts.
On the PGA broadcasts, all the players have dynamic nicknames and all are “heroes,” “warriors,” “swashbucklers,” and men of the highest of ethics who have come together on an historic green stage where nothing but epic drama and excitement will ensue. The PGA broadcasters don’t wait for the on-course action to define the story or viewers’ experience.
Lately, another big theme for the LPGA is that of the large amount of dominant foreign players and lack of American players. I am extremely uncomfortable even writing about this issue, as well as considering it a “problem.” My message to American players is simple: practice. And I don’t mean to just practice golf. Interview savvy, projection, positivism, marketing spin, and yes, even Twitter skills, are all areas that a celebrity must master. As I said above, making the LPGA exciting and interesting for viewers is essential, and each week there are 150 LPGA pros who could all help their cause.
The LPGA brims with wonderful and inspirational stories, charity programs, life-lessons, diversity, role-models, and heroes. The professional women of the LPGA need to be shown how to take their role and their tour much more seriously in everything they do, then perhaps the media, the marketing gurus, and the public will too.
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