Practically every golfing region boasts a women’s professional tour. America’s LPGA Tour has been on the go since 1950, the Japanese and Korean circuits since the late 1960s and ’70s, respectively, and the Ladies European Tour since 1978. The LET celebrated its 45th anniversary last year, and its founding members met up earlier this month at England’s Thorpeness Golf Club, where Christine Langford, a former LET chairman and three-time winner on the tour, is the golf director.
It is because Langford is so proud of the LET that she was peeved to learn that two fathers of LPGA Tour players are busy pressing for the various women’s circuits to merge – with particular reference to the LPGA and the LET – and establish a world tour akin to the WTA Tour in tennis.
And because President Trump was asked to help sort out the mess between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the dads in question – Albane Valenzuela’s father, Alberto, and Alexa Pano’s father, Rick – have written to the Trump Organization to suggest that he might want to be involved in negotiating the arrangements they have in mind.
This might sound a bit far-fetched, but the correspondents, who shared the content of their script with Beth Ann Nichols of Golfweek, seemed to suggest that such a move might be good for his CV.
Langford says that the LET had good reason not to jump at the chance to join forces with the LPGA when the question arose a year or so ago. As much as anything else, it was because the LET had been making encouraging steps of its own. For example, they now have six Saudi-sponsored events (including the $4.5 million PIF Saudi Ladies International and four Aramco Series events with purses of $2 million each), enough to have all the other tours pricking up their ears.
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