Tour Should Polish Image to Keep Up With the Field

The Ladies Professional Golf Assn. has a slight problem: it doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Is it Cheesecake on Spikes or a major player in the golf boom? Is it positioned for the 1990s or mired in the 1980s? Is it the tour with nerve or does it suffer from a bad case of organizational yips?

If there were a leaderboard for golf tours these days, the LPGA would be at even par, a few strokes behind the surprising Seniors and hardly within sight of the powerful Professional Golf Assn. But that’s what happens when you spend more time pushing sex appeal than golf appeal.

At last look, the men’s tour earned more than 26 times the television income the LPGA received ($26 million for the PGA, compared with $700,000 for the LPGA), had three times the prize money ($37 million compared with $12.4 million) and four times the corporate sponsorship ($100 million compared with $25 million). As monetary pies go, the LPGA isn’t getting much more than a sliver or two.

Something has to be done and don’t think William Blue, who was hired as the LPGA’s new commissioner last November, doesn’t know it.

“When I arrived on the scene what I found was a group of players who knew they could play great golf, but didn’t seem to have a focus and didn’t seem to really have a purpose,” said Blue, who is here to oversee the Nippon Travel-MBS tournament at Los Coyotes Country Club in Buena Park.

Blue, whose expertise centers on international marketing, likened the LPGA’s situation to a new business or one going through growing pains. “It needed focus and it needed an objective,” he said.

With this in mind, Blue did three things, beginning with the simple assertion that the LPGA was the premier women’s professional sports association. Then he asked tour players to trust his judgment in directing a new marketing strategy. Next he went after corporate America, hoping to lure sponsorship dollars to a tour that could use a few extra bucks.

“We are women’s golf--nothing more, nothing less,” Blue said. “We don’t have to make excuses for anything.”

Maybe not, but the LPGA does have to make some changes in its style and substance. It not only needs to find a way to convince sponsors and network television it’s worth the trouble, but the tour also has to convince the average hacker--men and women--that the LPGA is different and better than its competition.

Historically, the sport has been male dominated, but according to National Golf Foundation projections, women could comprise half of all golfers by the turn of the century. Now then, how to attract all these people to LPGA tournaments . . .

1) Create a new LPGA logo.

You should see the current tour symbol. It features the tour’s initials and the silhouette of a woman golfer at the end of her follow-through. Very dynamic. Also, has anyone glanced at the woman’s hairdo? She looks like June Cleaver with a three-iron. If I were Blue, I’d drop the logo faster than a bad habit.

2) Play to the LPGA’s strengths.

How many times have you watched a men’s tournament and heard this from the broadcast crew:

Kenny, he’s about 282 yards away from the pin and a stiff wind is blowing directly in his face. There are a half dozen bunkers surrounding the green and a large lagoon to the right. He has a seven-iron. I hope that isn’t too much club.” I don’t know about you, but I can’t relate to the PGA player’s skills. The average drive on the men’s tour is 260 yards. I can’t drive a golf cart that far.

But the LPGA . . . now there’s a collection of players everyone can watch and understand. LPGA players don’t reach every par five in two shots. They don’t drive par fours. They don’t hit wedges 150 yards. In short, they play a game you and I are more familiar with. Emphasize that.

3) Be different. Be bold.

Golf might be the only sport where every player doesn’t hit the same ball with the same equipment. It makes for unfair advantages (however small) and needless controversies.

How about a tour that had its players use the same type of clubs and balls? Wouldn’t this better determine the best player? Wouldn’t it take the game out of the hands of the engineers and give it back to the players?

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the LPGA were the first tour to try it?

4) Make it a misdemeanor for any LPGA member to pose for swimsuit pictorials.

Nothing against Deborah McHaffie or Cindy Rarick or any other LPGA player who appeared in a 1989 swimsuit promotion, but enough with the cheesecake. Can you imagine the PGA unveiling its own not-so-glossy photo spread with, say, Craig Stadler in a pair of Speedos? I don’t think anybody wants that on their conscience.

5) Challenge the PGA.

The LPGA shouldn’t settle for mixed matches featuring the top female and male pros. Instead, it should propose a tournament that would match the LPGA’s best four players against the PGA’s best four (you could use money standings as a way to determine the participants). The men would play from the championship tees and the women would play from their normal tournament tees. Other minor adjustments could be made and I’ll tell you what:

I’d bet on the LPGA--against the men . . . and for the future.