OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Change is not something that comes easy, and it certainly does not arrive without resistance. Like leaving a dark room for the sunshine, a new experience can be painful, blinding, until you adjust to a new reality. Entrances and exits are the challenge of life, but they are also the doorway to better things.
That certainly has been the case with the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. The decision three years ago by Commissioner Mike Whan to rebrand the LPGA Championship was met with opposition from some veteran players who argued to preserve that bit of tradition. But it was a battle he embraced because he could see past today.
“Losing the LPGA Championship is tough; but change is tough,” Whan said on May 29, 2014, when the alliance between the LPGA, PGA of America and KPMG was first announced. “But also adding Women's PGA Championship is prominent, it’s powerful and it sends a message that we are not just evolving this championship; we are elevating it.”
And time has proven that to be an accurate peek into the future. The first three Women’s PGA Championships were at Westchester CC, Sahalee CC and, starting Thursday, Olympia Fields CC. The next two will be at Kemper Lakes GC and Hazeltine National GC. All of those venues have hosted men’s majors.
And on Tuesday at Olympia Fields, PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua, KPMG CEO Lynne Doughtie and Whan announced their partnership will continue at least through 2023 and that this year’s $3.5 million purse will be raised to $3.65 million in 2018, 62 percent more than the $2.25 million played for in the 2014 LPGA Championship.
“We’re going to continue to make sure that we make this one of the very best events not just in women’s golf but in golf,” Bevacqua said in announcing the extension. “When we started this partnership three years ago, it was so incredibly important to the PGA of America,” he said. He added: “I can promise you there’s unbelievable golf courses coming behind 2019.”
The vision of those who hatched the idea – and Stacy Lewis, then the No. 1 player in the world, was a key cog in the machine – has been realized in better venues, richer prize money, wider TV exposure through NBC and Golf Channel and, with the pre-tournament Women’s Leadership Summit, a stronger sense of purpose in using what happens inside the ropes help women in all aspects of society.
Also, the tournament simply feels much bigger, the way a major should feel. The players notice it in the size of the grandstands, the quality of the hospitality areas and clockwork precise of how the event is run. Whan was right: it’s more than an evolution, it’s an elevation, perhaps to heights not even he anticipated.
“The late great Louise Suggs said to me in 2009 in a hotel lobby in Houston, ‘You have only one job, kid, and that’s leave this game better than you found it,’” Whan said Tuesday. “If I do nothing else in the rest of my time as commissioner or erase everything else I’ve done until now, this one event would have been able to keep my promise to one of the founders of the LPGA.”
First played in 1955, the LPGA Championship was second only to the U.S. Women’s Open as the oldest LPGA event. But it was not without its struggles and endured at least a half-dozen name changes. Simply put, a good tournament was made into a great tournament.
In a twist of irony, that 2014 news conference for the KPMG Women’s PGA was at Studio 8H of the NBC building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, the space that holds Saturday Night Live, which has lasted on TV more than 40 years not by staying the same but by changing while protecting its core mission: To make people laugh.
One of the ways in which this event has elevated itself is changing while protecting its core mission: To be the flagship tournament of the LPGA. A huge part of that elevation is its message to Inspire Greatness in girls and empower women.
“This partnership with the PGA of America and with the LPGA to create not just a major championship but something really special to elevate women on the golf course as well as off the golf course means so much to KPMG,” Doughtie said.
Looking back now, Whan admits that the reservations of some of those veteran players lurked in the corners of his mind.
“If I was being honest with you, I had some of the same anxiety because you’re taking a 60-year major with a lot of history, and I wanted to make sure we found a way to balance to the two,” Whan said. Then he used a reference every baseball fan will get to sum up the situation: “It’s kind of like going to Wrigley Field. You probably don’t get it until you’ve been there.”
And now that we’ve been there, pretty much everyone gets it: The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship is an idea that’s work on every conceivable level. Louise Suggs would be proud.
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