DENHAM, ENGLAND | At last week’s first joint meeting of the LPGA and the Ladies European Tour, Mike Whan, the LPGA commissioner, talked of this new age of “collaboration.†In the case of the LPGA’s and the LET’s recent alliance, he and his opposite number, Alex Armas, have produced a 24-strong tournament schedule for the 2020 European circuit in a startling 90 days. Loose ends were being tidied up even as the two of them were speaking, with, for example, the same maternity-leave arrangements which have been put in place recently on the LPGA being sorted out for Europe.
Everyone was talking excitedly about the new pathway afforded to the LET players – for the moment, the top five will go through to the LPGA’s Q-Series – and how it is appealing to potential sponsors no less than the players themselves. However, Whan himself was making just as many mentions of the different openings for every one of the LET women.
“They don’t all,†he reminded his audience, “want to reach No 1 in the world, and even those who do find it tough to have to go to America straight from school to try and fight their way onto the LPGA Tour. It’s a very lonely life and it’s better by far that they can begin their journey in Europe. As for those who want to stay and play all their days in Europe, that’s fine, too. I’m not one for making targets (regarding) future levels of prize money (a record €18 million was the figure announced for this year) but what I can safely say is that LET members will from now on be able to make a decent living all their golfing days. That’s so achievable.â€
In other words, they can lead the kind of settled lives they have not known in years and, as Whan added, it would not surprise him at all if there were to be the same baby boom in Europe as there has been on the LPGA Tour.
As the son of a working mother, a legal assistant, Whan sees it as part of his remit to ensure that the modern player can, as they say, have it all. He has never wanted his players to have to choose between being a golfer and a mother; he wants to give them the opportunity to do both.
Though there have been periods in the past when such as Juli Inkster and Nancy Lopez were bringing up their families while they played, there have been just as many spells when the LPGA Tour has been more of a child-free zone. In Whan’s early days in his post, the number of babies in the day-care centre was at one point down to two. Now it’s up to double figures – and there are more on the way.
“It sends out all the right messages for us. It changes people’s perception of the tour. They will see that it’s possible to play golf, take time off to have a family, and then come back when you’re ready.â€
Mike Whan
“The last thing I would have wanted,†continued Whan, “is for a great player like Stacy Lewis to have said, ‘I’m going to be a mum, so you won’t be seeing me again.’ She had her baby in 2018 and now she’s back, as is Gerina Piller. And much the same applies with Brittany Lincicome, who had her first child last year. The tour wouldn’t come to an end if Brittany had disappeared but it’s all the stronger because she’s here.
“Today, I see all the mums with their babies sitting in car seats behind where they’re practising and it’s amazing. When new players on tour find themselves playing with these golfing mothers, they start thinking that they can do the same. It sends out all the right messages for us. It changes people’s perception of the tour. They will see that it’s possible to play golf, take time off to have a family, and then come back when you’re ready.â€
Like many, Whan had had his misgivings as to whether he was doing the right thing in giving the Ladies European Tour the helping push it needed after Mark Lichtenhein, the CEO at the time, had done a good job in steadying the ship. Some of Whan's players had echoed his concerns, but in no time at all they were all on the same side. Like their commissioner, they could see how it was in everyone’s interests to get more women playing, and that it made sense to create a pipeline for women in Europe – and maybe, in time, on other tours around the world – to graduate to the LPGA stage.
If Whan needed still more convincing it came from one of his founders. “Should I be doing this?†he asked her. “You should because you can,†she replied. “It helps what our mission is all about.â€
Almost inevitably in this day and age, the “collaboration†Whan talked about at the start of last week’s get-together embraced the men. Keith Pelley, the CEO of the men’s European Tour and an eager member of the new LPGA/LET board, was to hand to tell of how he will be making a careful study of the new mixed event in Sweden to be hosted by Henrik Stenson and Annika Sörenstam. (That week, the men and women will be playing for the same prize money.) He said he had had a robust conversation with his players when the idea was first mooted, only it was not all about whether the women were taking up places in the draw which should have gone to men. They were mostly more concerned about the course setup being as correct as it had been when the women played in the same field as the Staysure and Challenge Tour players in Jordan last year. (Meghan MacLaren from the LET finished in second place behind Daan Huizing.)
On to the possibility of equal prize money ever becoming the norm, Whan summed it up as well as anyone. First he mentioned how, though purses on the LPGA Tour have risen to the tune of 80 percent during his time on tour, the leap has been mirrored on the men’s PGA Tour.
“What we have to remember," he advised, "is that the men deliver five times the viewership that we do.â€
No-one can argue with that, though it is worth remembering that things can change. After all, such impenetrable male fortresses as Muirfield and the R&A now take women members while, in South Korea, those viewership figures would currently read the other way round.
Top: European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley, Ladies European Tour chair Marta Figueras-Dotti and chief executive Alex Armas, European Solheim Cup captain Catriona Matthew and LPGA commissioner Mike Whan at last Friday's meeting outside London
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