Should LPGA titles be stripped away decades later?

Jane Blalock either won 29, 26 or 27 times on the LPGA, depending on which media guide you pick up from the late 90s. How can a player who last won in 1985 have such a discrepancy in her record?

Well, like many things about this game, it’s complicated. But the bottom line is this: After being credited for having 29 wins for more than a decade, the phone rang in the late 90s and Blalock, 76, was told that her two victories in the Lady Angelo’s 4-Ball in 1972 and 1973 were being taken away. She’d now have 27 titles. Blalock’s partner for both events, Sandra Palmer, 79, received the same call. Her victory total dropped from 21 to 19.

They were told that a committee had met and decided that team events should not count as official victories, and that was that.

It seems exceedingly harsh to take titles away from players decades down the road. Add them, sure, but strip them away?

When the LPGA introduced a two-person team event in 2019, the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, Blalock took note of the fact that it was considered an official win. While the results don’t count toward the Rolex Rankings, Solheim Cup points, or Player of the Year, the winners do receive the standard two-year winner’s exemption on the priority list, CME points, official money and a point toward the LPGA Hall of Fame.

“If Cydney Clanton is going to get her tournament win,” said Blalock of one of the inaugural winners, “then why not for me and Sandra?”

While there was some initial back and forth with the LPGA in 2019, Blalock said she hasn’t heard anything about it since.

(Her victory total dipped down to 26 when it looks like her 1974 Southgate Ladies Open victory was erroneously left off the list and then added back, giving her 27 titles.)

Meg Mallon served on the committee that made that decision back in the late 90s, when changes were being considered for the tour’s Hall of Fame criteria. Some of the greatest to ever play the game weren’t going to get in under the current system, that required 30 LPGA victories with two major championships, or 35 with one major, or 40 with no majors.

That’s when it was changed to the current 27-point system, in which one point is given for each regular LPGA victory, two for a major win and one point each for the LPGA Rolex Player of the Year and Vare Trophy awards. In addition to having 27 points, players must also either win an LPGA major or Player of the Year honors.

During the course of this years-long process, there…