It’s a Wonderful World for LPGA

The LPGA begins its 54th year of play this week in Tucson and since it is the second week of March, it seems to be a good time to start a new year.

Three years ago, the LPGA decided to can its January and February tournaments, start the year in March, play fewer events for more money and see where the whole thing went.

Since this is golf, naturally there was some grumbling, mostly by the players who figured that fewer tournaments meant fewer opportunities to make a living. It really hasn’t worked out that way, which is just how LPGA Commissioner Ty Votaw envisioned it, because more players are making more money than before.

Annika Sorenstam reached the $2-million mark for the third consecutive year in 2003, when eight players won at least $900,000. In 1996, Karrie Webb became the first player to pass the $1-million mark in season’s earnings. Since then, it has been done 18 times.

In 1999, only 12 LPGA events had prize money of at least $1 million, but there are 27 this year.

Even so, as we have come to learn, it’s not all about the money, but where it’s being generated.

As the LPGA kicks off the season this week in Arizona for the Welch’s/Fry’s Championship, the record shows that attendance and television viewership are on the rise and that the organization is still on the rise, for reasons that ought to be obvious.

It’s a global strategy.

This is not the stuff of world domination here, because the LPGA Tour cannot compete with the PGA Tour, yet that misses the point. As Votaw often says, the LPGA should be judged against other women’s sports, not against the men.

Even if that’s not the case, there is one comparison with which Votaw couldn’t argue.

If the PGA Tour is about the best players in North America, it still has separate counterparts in the European Tour, the Japan Golf Tour, the Australasia Tour and the Asian PGA Tour. But the LPGA Tour rules the women’s golf world and all the top women’s players are members.

Such a distinction is even more pronounced this year.

Take a look at the 2004 LPGA media guide and there are three golfers pictured on the cover: Sorenstam of Sweden, Lorena Ochoa of Mexico and Se Ri Pak of Korea.

Sorenstam is the old lady of the group at 33, but Pak has won four majors at 26 and Ochoa is 22 and had eight top 10s as a rookie last year.

But international players aren’t the big part of the LPGA’s global strategy, only the competition part.

The big part of the LPGA’s long-range planning is about who’s watching, and where they are.

It’s a grand television plan, but the LPGA is targeting a goal of reaching 200 million households in 80 countries this year.

As much as half of the LPGA’s television revenue comes from rights fees from international broadcasts.

Meanwhile, the LPGA would not only like you to tune in, but also to buy.

Recent reports have said that the LPGA posted $20 million in international retail sales of LPGA licensed goods in 2003, four years after initiating an international licensing plan.

What makes this plan go is the interest from places other than the U.S. in the LPGA. In 1994, the LPGA had 43 players from 13 countries other than the U.S. There are 96 players from 24 countries playing the LPGA Tour. That means close to half of the LPGA’s members are international players.

Of the top five money winners from 2003, Juli Inkster was the only player from the U.S. The others were Sorenstam, Pak and Grace Park and Hee-Won Han of Korea.

What do Wendy Doolan of Australia, Pak, Patricia Meunier-Lebouc of France, Sorenstam, Candie Kung of Taiwan, Pak again and Park have in common? They won the first seven tournaments of the year in 2003. In fact, no player from the U.S. won a tournament last year until Rosie Jones won in the second week of May.

For U.S. players feeling a little left out, that might be stretching the globalization a bit too far. But remember this: Michelle Wie was born in Honolulu.