The Golf News Net

The news that the 2009 LPGA Corning Classic will be the last for the 31 year old event was not a complete shock to the golfing community.  For the past several seasons, there had been talk from sponsors that the support that the tournament was receiving from LPGA players had been waning. 

Lorena Ochoa, having to defend eight championships in a single season, opted to pay a fine rather than play in the Corning Classic under the LPGA Tour's "one in four" participation rule.  Though a rare circumstance and an understandable absence, it still underscored where Corning was on the LPGA Tour pecking order.

Other golfers have routinely snubbed Corning in pursuit of more lucrative tournaments on the schedule.  In other words, the tournament treated like a major by the wonderful people in Corning had been reduced in value by the almighty dollar.

That story is nothing novel for professional golf, though.  As professional golf tournaments purses have increased worldwide, tournaments in the United States on both the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour have had to work franticly to keep up or fold.  Growing competition from tours outside of the United States have strained the more traditional tournament scheduling model for players.  Professionals are more likely to chase cash from bigger purses and appearance fees than they are to remain loyal to events that are either in their country or have a standing history with a particular Tour.

CHASING THE MONEY

Rather than play at the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill, LPGA Tour star Paula Creamer is taking a seven figure appearance fee to play in a Japanese LPGA Tour major.  Tiger Woods is going to play at the Australian Masters in exchange for a $3 million appearance fee - his going rate.  Even Phil Mickelson - notorious for ending his season after the US PGA Championship - has begun to expand his schedule to take advantage of these appearance fees. 

He has played in Singapore on the Asian Tour for the past several seasons, in part because of his sponsorship deal with Barclay's.  But, he has also played in the HSBC Champions event at which he said last January, "It seems as though wealth is being created on an international basis and golf is growing internationally.  I'd like to help with the growth as well as partake in its success."  In other words, Mickelson will go to where the money is.

GAPING SCHEDULE HOLES

Interestingly enough, much of the attention in the sponsorship story has been on the LPGA Tour.  Perhaps it is because the LPGA Tour is more visible in its losses than the PGA Tour.  The LPGA Tour announced a 2009 schedule in November that had three fewer tournaments than the season prior, including the event hosted by Annika Sorenstam.  Four events in total had left the schedule, though the Tour was able to resume playing of another event - the Honda LPGA Thailand.

The fact that the LPGA Tour schedule continues to have grow more beyond the borders of the United States draws heated criticism from stateside fans and media.  The Tour was forced to go where sponsors are, which have been predominantly growing only in Asia prior to the global economic recession.  The expansion of the 2009 schedule to include two Asian swings drew serious concern from players and fans because of the lack of television coverage in the United States and that the events were limited-field, meaning fewer full field opportunities for also-ran players.

So far this year, the LPGA Tour has lost the Ginn Open and lacks a sponsor for the new season-ending Tour Championship.  The event, owned by IMG, lost its sponsor when Stanford Financial was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

These event combined to create two enormous gaps on the LPGA Tour schedule for this season.  One ends this week with the playing of the Corona Championship, in which the LPGA Tour did not play in three of four weeks.  Later in the season, there is a two month gap after the Jamie Farr event which features the US Women's Open, Evian Masters, Women's British Open, and Solheim Cup.  If a player fails to qualify for those events, then they have no playing opportunities for that time span.

In other words, the LPGA Tour has very visible and noticeable problems that are easy to point out and criticize.  The PGA Tour is not without serious problem.  It is just better at hiding them.

CRACKS FILLED WITH PLASTER

The PGA Tour Fall Series lost the Ginn sur Mer Classic after Ginn first decided to cut back on sponsorships and then for a subsidiary corporation to declare bankruptcy.  The Tour has been unable to fill the open slot in the 2009 schedule despite announcing a potential stop in Georgia.  On the Tour's website, there is no open date.

It would seem unlikely that the PGA Tour would be able to fill this slot when other tournaments on the schedule are losing title sponsorship.  The US Bank Championship in Milwaukee - now scheduled as the opposite field event against the British Open - will lose its sponsorship after this season.  Stanford Financial?  Don't even start.  Cash-strapped FBR, whose share price plummeted over 90% from its high, will not return to the Scottsdale event after its contract ends.  It is reported that CA is looking to downgrade its sponsorship level from its current involvement in the World Golf Championship at Doral to a less expensive title sponsorship commitment.

Even FedEx Cup season events are not immune. As Jon Show recently reported in the Sports Business Journal, Crowne Plaza will end its title sponsorship of the long standing event at Colonial.  There's no way that Chrysler will return as sponsor of the Bob Hope event in the California desert.

Sponsors are hurting and simply cannot spend the millions of dollars that a title sponsor must commit to have their name on a PGA Tour event.  With a large percentage of the schedule having ties to the banking and automobile industries, the PGA Tour is scrambling to fill in the gaps of their schedule as they happen.  Unlike the LPGA Tour, though, the PGA Tour has been somewhat successfu in filling the gapsl and also been able to keep mum on the issues.

Aside from the sponsor challenges, the PGA Tour has faced increased competition.  The European Tour has done a decent job in attracting stronger fields than the PGA Tour on several occasions this season.  Those events have largely been those which pay exorbitant appearance fees to competitors, but the European Tour's George O'Grady has not been shy from touting his Tour's minor victories.  He can readily recite the instances in which the weekly Euro Tour event has offered more Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points than the PGA Tour competition.  The bias of the ranking system against American tournaments aside, there is an indication that the competition is perhaps growing.

With these apparent problems on both Tours, there is a growing chorus of potential approaches to the issue.

NO PANACEA

Ron Sirak of Golf World suggested in a piece this week that the LPGA Tour, Ladies European Tour, JLPGA, and KLPGA merge together to form a global women's golf Tour.  Considering that is the direction of the LPGA Tour in its own scheduling, that may well become reality one day.  While it does address global competition for similar sponsors, it negatively impacts golf in the United States.  Much of the criticism levied against current commissioner Carolyn Bivens and her predecssor Ty Votaw - now the key representative in leading the charge to get golf into the 2016 Olympics - was that the LPGA Tour was leaving its base in the USA to follow money.  The ending of the Corning is a perfect example of the difficult decision that the Tour must face.  In order to survive, much less grow, the Tour must balance chasing bigger sponsors and purses while not alienating the fans that made their growth an opportunity in the first place.

Sirak also suggests that the European, Asian, OneAsia, and PGA Tours become more cognizant of and cooperative with each other and their schedules.  He is suggesting a move toward a global golf tour that Greg Norman envisioned in the early 1990s.  The same issue that plagues the women's golf consolidation idea plagues the concept in the men's game.  Even further, the European and Asian Tours have both spoken publicly that they are seeking to out-manuever and overtake the PGA Tour in terms of becoming the most prominent golf tour on the planet.  In a theme from George Orwell's 1984, it appears that the competition is more interested in winning than growing collectively.  Unlike the classic novel, though, constant war does not help shield problems from the populace.

The golf industry, media, and its fans are well aware of the issues facing the sport.  The business model that has driven the game's explosive growth since the early 1990s is in danger because of global recession and a saturated market place.  The growing global reach of the sport into developing economies has caused an increase in the number of countries willing to host golf tournaments and the number of global corporations wanting to host professional events in their home nations. 

Professional golf will have to make careful choices between chasing money, alienating fans, and determining the depth of talent that will be able to participate in the globalization of the professional golf tour.  Before the game can reach that point, though, it must repair its sponsor foundation.