Matt Adams, host of Fairways of Life on SiriusXM Radio, broadcast live from the LPGA’s headquarters on Tuesday. Adams spoke with guests from a variety of departments at the LPGA including Commissioner Mike Whan. Here are some highlights from the two-hour broadcast.
Mike Whan, LPGA Commissioner
On The Success of LPGA in 2017:
“You know last year at this time, like a lot of interviews at this time, people ask me to predict who’s the next one. I’ve been 0 for 8 in eight seasons in predicting what’s going to happen inside the yellow ropes, and that’s the exciting part of the LPGA.”
On the Worldwide Growth of the LPGA:
“One of the benefits I had when I started in 2010 was I saw the LPGA was global, even I don’t think at the time the LPGA realized it was global. I always tell people going global is like going through a tunnel to get to the other side. In the beginning, the tunnel gets dark, you get a little uncomfortable and your mind says turn back. When companies go global it makes for a great PowerPoint slide, but once you start going global it’s uncomfortable, people get homesick and you’re messing up in meetings and you’re making a bunch of mistakes because there’s nobody to follow. We were in the middle of the tunnel when I joined in 2010. We were going global, we were already halfway in the tunnel and I was able to come in and say ‘Hey guys, trust me. The other side of this tunnel is pretty exciting. Don’t stop.’”
The Founders’ Expectations for Whan:
“They want to know, is the game going to be better for the next generation of women? ‘Cause they played a lot of golf, they didn’t make a lot of money, they had a lot of push back. But they really believed they were gonna leave it better for the next generation and they did.”
On Inbee Park Winning Gold at the Olympics in Rio in 2016:
“Inbee’s husband said to me one time, we were playing in a pro-am, Inbee was a famous golfer in Korea before the Olympics, now she’s famous in Korea. He said we could walk into a mall, unless you were a golfer you didn’t know Inbee Park. Now if you walk into a mall, everyone knows Inbee Park.”
On the Success of the LPGA:
“We’re excited about what we’re doing and we realize this is about more than just Tour events. Like I said from the very beginning, our job is to leave this game better for the daughters of the players playing today. Give these women the best opportunities, but make sure their daughters have a different experience in golf than they did when they were 9 or 10 years old.”
Christina Kim, LPGA Member
On Being A Veteran on Tour:
“I’m just waiting for a girl to be like ‘oh I’m an LPGA tour player, I’m a rookie,’ and I’ll be like ‘I’ve been on Tour longer than you’ve been alive.’ Not even the fact I’m older than you, I’ve been on Tour longer than you’re alive.”
On The Impact She’s Had on Tour and People’s Lives:
“The way that I grew up and the incredible support I had from my family they’ve shaped me to be the person I am today as well as all the people I’ve come across. That’s the thing I’ve come to realize, every little action that you take, children are so receptive and they’re like sponges. Having good interactions with people of all ages of course, but having good interaction with children, providing them with good reinforcement, which is not the same as participation trophies because that’s a completely different other subject. There are people who have impacted my life that will never ever know. It was something that I wouldn’t have spoken to them but witnessing something they did, seeing someone stop someone else from bullying a kid. Or being that person or just standing up for something you believe in, even if it’s something a little off kilter, off the mark of what standard society says, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve learned to live my life with conviction these days. I say it all the time, I’m trying to learn with more forgiveness for other people but more so for myself because no one is perfect and you know it’s all about, life is about interactions with other people. It really is and we never know how much time we have on this earth. So we should try and make every moment count and make every moment last.”
Heather Daly-Donofrio, Chief Communications and Tour Operations Officer
On the Success of the LPGA Tour:
“We obviously take the time to celebrate our successes, but we have lofty goals. Down the road we want to be named in the world of sports. LPGA we want to become a bigger brand, we want more exposure for our players. We want more exposure for our title partners. We all have a vision as to where we want to go and so we have those successes and then we keep pushing forward.”
How She Has Seen the Tour Evolve Since She Was a Player:
“We had 360 something players at Stage I of Q-school. I think the first year I went in ’93 there was probably 160. The amount of players trying to get the LPGA now is so much more and they’re so much more competitive than when I played.”
On the Uniqueness of Golf:
“That’s the beauty of the game, isn’t it? I always call it the great equalizer, because it doesn’t matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter where you came from, it doesn’t matter how tall you are, the golf club doesn’t know who you are. All you have to do is shoot the lowest score. But to have a Tour where Juli Inkster and Laura Davies in their 50s play with Lydia Kos and Sung Hyun Parks and Brooke Hendersons, who are teenagers, you don’t see that in sports at an elite level. I don’t know if there’s another sport you can see that at an elite level.”
Nancy Henderson, President LPGA Foundation
Getting Lessons from LPGA T&CP:
“We’re going to help your swing become the best it can be. You can watch the players out on Tour right now. Swings look very different, tempo matches their personality and that’s what we kinda try to do. We try to take the everyday golfer, the elite golfer, whoever comes to us, and try and make them the best they can be.”
On Launching The New LPGA Women’s Network:
“If we are not the voice of women in the game, who is?”
Mike Nichols, Chief Business Officer of Epson Tour
When Mike meets with fellow fast-talker and commissioner Mike Whan and who passes out first:
“It would probably be him, because when I’m in his office, he’s doing all the talking.”
The learning experience of playing on the Epson Tour before advancing to LPGA:
“Hitting balls for six hours a day isn’t the best thing, but sometimes when you get to the LPGA Tour and you think, ‘well how am I going to beat Lydia Ko? I should practice six hours a day.’ Well you might be better off practicing two hours a day and not wearing yourself out. So there’s a lot of that kind of experimentation that goes on on the Epson Tour.”
On the Growth of Epson Tour:
“We’ve had a nice run the last couple years. I’ve been with the Tour since 2013 and we had at that time 15 tournaments and we were playing for about $1.6 million in prize money. We’re now up to 22 events and playing in excess of $3 million this next year, so we’ve had 50% growth in the number of tournaments and essentially doubled purses. So we’ve had a nice little run.”
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