LPGA Commissioner to step down in 2025 — Slow season
The IX: Golf Thursday with Marin Dremock, Dec. 5, 2024
The biggest administrative news of the LPGA season dropped on Dec. 2: LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan will be stepping down from her position, effective Jan. 9, 2025.
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Welcome to December, and welcome back to Golf Thursday!
Marcoux Samaan’s time as LPGA Commissioner saw growth in so many aspects of the game. Boosts in tournament prize purses, individual payouts, mental and physical health resources and benefit opportunities all happened since Marcoux Samaan took over in 2021.
But now, in a new era of professional women’s golf starting in the new year, a new leader will have some challenges to face.
Marcoux Samaan has put the LPGA in a position that they’ve never been in before as an organization. Mega sponsors, mega names rising to global stardom (ahem, Nelly Korda), mega fan engagement on and off the course. There are big shoes to fill.
There are also big shoes to repair.
Given what happened on Friday at this year’s Solheim Cup in Gainesville, Va., with the delays in shuttling folks to the first tee for the start of the day, it’s going to take a great deal of effort from the new commish to gain the trust of some paying customers.
Even just last month at the season finale, the CME Group Tour Championship, struggles with TV time were the talk of the week rather than Jeeno Thitikul’s gritty win. Sean Zak of Golf.com puts it this way: “While the popularity of women’s sports at-large grew at a rapid rate in 2024, the LPGA did not see marked increases in television ratings.”
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It’s imperative that the new commissioner work on a way to more widely broadcast LPGA tournaments, and specifically the players that everyone’s tuning in to see. Regression is inevitable if the same trends of poor coverage continue.
The lofty goals Marcoux Samaan drew up for the Tour came to life, in a sense. New leaders that step into this blossoming organization will have to take its growth seriously.
The LPGA isn’t a baby anymore.
With a fanbase and their interest growing at exponential rates, it’s easy to not be prepared, just like the Solheim Cup situation. Why account for a fleet of shuttles when they weren’t needed in the past?
But I think the new commissioner will have no other choice but to be prepared.
The time of transition comes at a decent time, the LPGA offseason, but a whole year before Marcoux Samaan’s contract was set to expire. Pressure? Maybe. But the cushion of the offseason should be ample time for new leadership to be decided and the interim leader to begin a plan.
Liz Moore, the current chief legal and technology officer and corporate secretary of the LPGA, will serve as interim commissioner in the meantime.
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Five at The IX: Comments on pace of play
Sunday’s LET season finale sparked discussion about a universal golf problem: slow play. The cause for debate this time was Carlota Ciganda, who captured a victory in her home country of Spain over the weekend.
This Golf.com article details the situation, saying that on one hole, Ciganda took essentially twice the allowed time for a player to hit a shot.
Ciganda has a history with slow play accusations, one of them coming at the 2023 Evian Championship. In this case, she was disqualified for returning a lower score than her actual score after refusing to accept a two-stroke penalty for slow play.
Slow play was also an issue at this year’s The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican. It took Nelly Korda’s group five hours and 38 minutes to finish round three on Saturday, and they were not happy about it.
So what do we do about it?
Here are five comments on slow play:
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Be a role model
I can’t say it any better than Annika Sorenstam: “You see the young girls out here, they’ve got to show how to play fast if they’re going to grow this game.”
Learning to play golf, especially without a cart, the number one thing I was taught was to keep up pace of play. Every golf coach I had stressed this to both new and more experienced players. It’s OK if you’re playing bad, but you can play bad fast.
Well, the playing bad part might not be as relevant to LPGA pros.
But the playing fast part? Absolutely. Show amateur and budding golfers that it’s important to be ready to hit when it’s your turn. With the growth of LPGA TV viewership, you’ve got a lot of eyes watching your pre-shot routine. Pros have a lot of influence on the broader sense of the game, especially the etiquette for pace of play.
Penalties
There need to be higher consequences for violating pace of play policies. Lauren Coughlin makes a good point when she expressed that “fines only do so much.” For some of these players, a $4,000 fine for slow play hardly makes a dent.
Stroke penalties, on the other hand, are more directly detrimental to a player. It also makes sense that a player would be punished for their play in a way that directly affects the result of their play: their score.
If Ciganda takes twice the amount of allotted time to hit one golf shot, dole out a one-stroke penalty. Two strokes for the price of one! That’s just math, right?
New commish
Multiple reporters have posited that the new commissioner of the LPGA is going to have to confront pace of play once they step into the position. Maybe the new leader will heed advice like Beth Ann Nichols’: shrink the fields and finishing before dark might not be such an issue.
I’m curious as to whether or not the incoming commissioner will mark this at the top of their to-do list or let it slip into darkness until an inevitable slow play scenario arises again.
Fans
Both Charley Hull and Lexi Thompson voiced that they felt bad for fans that endured upwards of five-hour rounds at The ANNIKA.
I’m going to push back against this logic, much to Thompson and Hull’s chagrin.
Why would golf fans complain about being out on a golf course watching the best players in the world? Wouldn’t fans want to be there as long as possible? Wouldn’t they want to get their money’s worth?
The organization has fought so hard to put women’s professional golf on the map and in recent years has been extremely successful. Why would players complain about fans spending long days on the course watching them?
Slow play might turn TV viewers away because of expiring network coverage, which is why something needs to be addressed. But when fans show up in person to a golf course for an LPGA tournament, they know they’re in it for the day. And quite frankly, that’s the fun of experiencing golf in person.
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“I’m workin’ here!”
Both Ally Ewing and Ciganda made points about playing golf for a living regarding the slow play conversation.
“I don’t think people understand how tough golf can be … mentally it’s a lot tougher than what people think,” Ciganda said after her slow play, again, at The ANNIKA. “Golfers just drink some beers and play some golf, and we do this for a living. A lot goes through in your mind.”
“People are playing for their livelihood, so I get it why people take their time. I think there is a line we have to draw,” said Ewing, who is retiring from full-time professional golf this year.
I definitely understand this point. There is so much on the line during each golf shot, and some folks truly may not understand the gravity of each tournament.
I’m just not sure it’s an excuse for dancing on the line of the most basic of golf etiquette standards. Especially if you’re Ciganda, an LPGA Tour vet who has a history with slow play. If you say you’re going to make an effort to improve, there has to be some kind of evidence for it. And players should be held accountable.
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