BETHESDA, Md. – Cristie Kerr calls Congressional’s renovated Blue Course one of the best she’s ever played. As LPGA players drive courtesy Cadillacs this week, dine in a gargantuan clubhouse – complete with sugar cookies shaped like the Washington Monument – and compete for a $9 million purse, double last year’s at the KPMG Women’s PGA, Stacy Lewis has a message: “In our history of the LPGA, this is far from normal.”
The LPGA was in grave peril when Lewis joined more than a dozen years ago. There were 23 events on the schedule, and nearly half of them were overseas.
“This current group of players, I don’t think they quite realize how lucky we are with the opportunities that we have,” said Lewis. “I mean, they have come to expect them over the last four or five years, that this setup this week is normal.”
Katherine Kirk, one of only a handful of players over 40 who competes regularly on the LPGA, worries about an “entitlement attitude” permeating the tour. She looks back on what the LPGA founders did themselves in the 1950s to get this tour off the ground – promotions, course setup, rulings, marketing – and holds a deep appreciation.
“In comparison to that, we have it easy,” she said. “We just rock up to tournaments.”
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan said the total purse on the LPGA in 1972 was $972,000. This week’s winner will earn $1,350,000.
“Pretty remarkable growth,” said Marcoux Samaan. “And even in 2021, I think our purses were just over $70 million, and now, to be in 2022 over $97 million is really great.”
Of course, money is the talk of the game right now. As a field of 156 women celebrate the second-biggest purse in tour history this week, PGA Tour stars are leaving their already lucrative tour for mind-blowing amounts of guaranteed cash on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. The never-ending Saudi news cycle already drowns out the biggest headlines in the women’s game – even at the majors.
When asked if she was concerned that a similar Saudi-backed threat could come to the LPGA, Marcoux Samaan said: “Listen, we wake up every day trying to make the LPGA the leader in women’s golf and to make it the very best tour. That’s what we focus on. We have a great staff. We have great partners. We have the best players in the world. We’re really just doubling down on what we’re doing.”
As for LIV Golf’s ambitions in the women’s game,…
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