After a meeting of more than a dozen top players last week, including Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, Christie Kerr, Mogan Pressel and Natalie Gulbis, a letter was sent to the LPGA Tour Board urging that Commissioner, Carolyn Bivens resign. Bivens took over the Commissioner position from Ty Votaw in 2005 and has two years remaining on her contract.
The letter stated that the LPGA Tour woes cannot be blamed on a poor economy and asked the Board to find a new leader to rebuild relationships with longtime sponsors.
The meeting with the top LPGA players took place two days after the Tour lost another tournament. The Kapalua LPGA Classic asked for a year off to find a title sponsor. The LPGA stated that it would use all legal actions to hold Kapalua to the reminder of its contract, another four years.
The Tour has two stops left this year at Rochester, N.Y. and Toledo, Ohio, and the renewal of these two events is uncertain at this time. The Tour has already lost another popular event, the Corning Classic, and equally questionable is the Michelob Ultra Championship in Virginia.
All total, the Tour has lost seven tournaments since 2007, including all three events staged in Hawaii. The Seoul Broadcasting Systems was offended when Bivens announced during the SBS Open in Hawaii that it had a new television contract with another Korean network. That announcement ended the SBS sponsorship and it went ahead and signed a 10-year contract with the PGA Tour to sponsor the season's opening tournament at Kapalua.
The U.S. Women's Open, which is not run by the LPGA Tour, is being played this week outside Philadelphia. After that, the LPGA Tour will not have another tournament in the United States until the last week in August.
When tournaments that have been very loyal to the LPGA start withdrawing then something is not right. We'll see where this one goes!!
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