Shag Bag

RICHMOND, Texas – So where does Marty Evans go from here?

The acting commissioner steps aside on Jan. 4 when Michael Whan takes over, but Evans gave up her spot on the LPGA Board of Directors to assume her interim role. Evans could rejoin the board with two openings for independent directors to be filled sometime early next year, but Golf World reported this week that there are some significant maneuvers under way that may reshape the board.

According to sources cited in the report, Dawn Hudson will remain on the board but is unlikely to be re-elected chairwoman because of “backlash for allowing the Carolyn Bivens situation to go on for so long.” Bivens was forced out as commissioner in a player revolt in July. The report also stated that Evans has told the board that she will only serve again if she is elected chairwoman, but that player directors might not support that move because of Evans’ role in recent layoffs at the tour.

“I haven’t made a decision,” Evans told GolfChannel.com when asked if and how she wanted to return to the board. “I need to figure out what I want to do. I know that I want to be helpful to Mike [Whan]. That’s my goal, but how do I contribute?”

There was turnover among the seven player members of the board this week with Kim Hall and Katie Futcher elected to three-year terms. Juli Inkster’s term expired. So did the term of Christina Kim, who sought another term but was not re-elected.

Michelle Ellis was re-elected to another term as president in 2010 with Sherri Steinhauer re-elected as vice president.

There was also change among the six independent directors on the LPGA Board with Tony Ponturo elected to a three-year term. He’s the chief executive officer of Ponturo Management Group and a former executive at Anheuser-Busch. Leslie Greis was re-elected to a three year term. She is founder and managing member of Perennial Capital Advisors.

The terms of Bill Morton, Nancy Wiese and Grant Gregory expire this year. Two of the three openings that creates have yet to be filled.

RICHMOND, Texas – Jiyai Shin appears determined to sweep the major LPGA awards this season.

Shin opened with birdies at three of her first four holes Thursday morning at the LPGA Tour Championship at The Houstonian Golf & Country Club.

Shin is bidding to win Rolex Player of the Year, the Vare Trophy for low scoring average, the money title and Rolex Rookie of the Year. She’s already locked up the Rookie of the Year award and the money title but is engaged in a tight race for POY and the Vare Trophy.

Shin is eight points ahead of Lorena Ochoa in the POY race and 29 ahead of Cristie Kerr. The winner gets 30 points this week, second place 12 points, third place nine with points going down to a single point for 10th place.

Ochoa leads the tour in scoring average with a 70.22 average with Shin second at 70.267 and Kerr third at 70.274.

If Shin wins Player of the Year, she will join Nancy Lopez as the only players to win that award and Rookie of the Year in the same season. Lopez did it in 1978.

This marks the first time since Beth Daniel won in 1994 that the Player of the Year points race has come down to the final event.

RICHMOND, Texas – Michelle Wie’s breakthrough victory created a bidding frenzy Tuesday night at the LPGA Tour Championship pro-am pairings party.

Michael Maggi, 43, an energy trader from Houston, successfully bid $22,000 for the right to play golf with Wie in Wednesday’s pro-am.

Maggi said he came to the pairings party determined to win the bid but never expecting he would have to pay more than $10,000. Technically, Maggi wasn’t bidding on Wie. The auction, complete with a professional auctioneer in a cowboy hat, was for the right to make the first pick at the pairings party.

“Everyone knew that was going to be Michelle Wie,” Maggi said.

Wie, who won her first LPGA title Sunday at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational, was there to watch the frenzied bidding. She said she couldn’t quite fathom someone paying that much to play golf with her.

“I was thinking maybe $50,” Wie cracked.

Maggi said he didn’t mind paying double what he budgeted.

“I felt better than my wife did about it,” said Maggi, whose wife stood anxiously beside him during the heated auction. “She wasn’t quite as enthusiastic.”

Maggi paid the entire bidding fee for his foursome, which included his friends, Mark and Jenny Murdoch of Houston and John Phillips, a club professional at Richmond's Shadow Hawk Golf Club. The team shot 16-under but didn't place among the top three in the pro-am.

"Michelle was great to play with," Maggi said. "I think the highlight was after John stubbed a chip and Michelle says, `At least you hit it straight, John.'"

The $22,000 bid by Maggi went to a good cause, the Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital’s orthopedic services division. LPGA pro Stacy Lewis had spine surgery at the Hermann Hospital to repair the damage caused by scoliosis. Lewis’ mother is a nurse at the Hermann Hospital’s Woodlands branch.

Kristy Elliott, the hospital’s community relations director, said Wie's high fetching price helped the hospital far exceed its financial projections for the night. More than $30,000 was raised at the pairings party.

"Anything over $5,000 would have been great," Elliott said.

There was only bidding for the first pick at the pairings party but money also was raised in raffles and other ways.

RICHMOND, Texas – The LPGA Playoffs won't be on the tour's schedule for a second straight season next year, but tour officials are aggressively seeking to bring them back in 2011.

In fact, Zayra Calderon, the LPGA vice president of tournament development, told GolfChannel.com Wednesday that the tour has approached ADT about returning to the tour as title sponsor, possibly in its former role as host of the playoff finale.

“We have renewed conversations with them,” Calderon said.

The LPGA Playoffs, a season-long points competition with the richest paycheck in women's golf ($1 million to the winner), culminated with the ADT Championship, last played at the end of the 2008 season.

The playoffs ran for three seasons, all of them ending with the ADT Championship at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Fla. ADT ended its sponsorship following a breakdown in negotiations with former commissioner Carolyn Bivens’ team. ADT officials said at the time that they would have been interested in staying on given a more favorable sponsorship renewal offer and date. The tour gave ADT's season-ending date to Stanford Financial as host of the LPGA Tour Championship. Stanford Financial’s sponsorship collapsed after the company fell under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This week's LPGA Tour Championship is being played with Rolex as presenting sponsor but no title sponsor.

The LPGA’s conversations with ADT are preliminary.

“There have been no formal talks about any proposal,” said Bill Marshall, president of Team Marketing, ADT's sports marketing agency. “At this point, we are just talking.”

Bivens explored the possibility of moving the LPGA Playoffs' finale to the start of the season following the playoffs, so it wouldn't conflict with football in the fall and receive better exposure. Calderon said the tour is still exploring a number of possibilities for changes to format and date.

RICHMOND, Texas – Paula Creamer believes her unusual menu of meals last week might be why she’s feeling so good at the LPGA Tour championship.

“Knock on wood,” she said.

Before leaving for the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico last week, Creamer stuffed her suitcase full of 40 pounds of packaged and canned foods. In with the clothes, she crammed a dozen or so cans of Chef Boyardee, about the same number of cans of Chicken of the Sea tuna, 16 fruit cups, 16 apple-sauce cups, boxes of Ritz Bitz and a jar of peanut butter. A lot of it went into her parents’ suitcase.

“We paid $140 in fees for overweight suitcases,” Creamer said. “My poor dad, he only had five shirts to wear.”

Creamer took the precaution because she came down with a mysterious malady after returning from the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Guadalajara exactly a year ago. She spent the night before the final round of the season-ending ADT Championship in the hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla. The intestinal malady, never definitively diagnosed despite extensive testing, plagued her much of this year, though she seems finally to have shaken it.

“I ate Chef Boyardee everyday," Creamer said of her diet last week. "I had to learn from last year. I took extra precautions.”

SUGAR LAND, Texas – Zayra Calderon looks at the LPGA’s smallest schedule in nearly 40 years and sees what others don’t.

She looks at a total prize-money package that could be a whopping $24 million less than what players competed for last year and sees what numbers don’t reveal.

The tour’s vice president of tournament development sees a successful rescue mission pulled together by a tireless staff.

Yes, tournaments were lost, purses rolled back, but there were vital saves to salvage a solid skeleton for the tour to build upon.

From nine tournaments signed up in July to the 23 announced Wednesday with a 24th imminent, the LPGA schedule has shrunk from the 34 played last year. Still, the schedule looks large to Calderon, who was on the point in the schedule's reconstruction after the ouster of commissioner Carolyn Bivens in July.

“This is a big deal, what was put together in a short time frame,” Calderon said. “It’s a good schedule.

“I don’t know that this LPGA team could have worked any harder in a compressed period of time. We’re exhausted. We pulled everyone together to make this happen. I believe we’ve worked seven days a week since July, no weekends or days off without exception.”

The schedule is the smallest since 1971. The total prize money next year should end up somewhere around $40 million. LPGA pros played for a record $64 million last year, according to the tour media guide.

“What we’ve put together is more satisfying than frustrating,” Calderon said.

Calderon isn't slowing down, either. She spent the moments before Wednesday morning's news conference announcing the new schedule talking to potential future sponsors for the LPGA Championship.

SUGAR LAND, Texas – The LPGA released a 2010 schedule Wednesday with the fewest tour events in nearly 40 years.

The new schedule features 24 events, fewest since 1971.

Given the difficult economic climate and fallout from the forced ouster of commissioner Carolyn Bivens in July, it’s a schedule LPGA officials were more than satisfied to present in a news conference a day before the start of the LPGA Tour Championship.

For acting commissioner Marty Evans, the schedule represents a foundation to build upon after four months of hard salvage work.

When Evans took over in July, there were just nine tournaments under contract.

“This is obviously a resilient organization, and I believe wholeheartedly a resurgent one,” Evans said. “Given the circumstances, I hope people look at the momentum created, where we are poised to go.”

The 2010 schedule is down from 27 events this year and 34 a year ago. There are just 13 events scheduled in the United States and one in Canada. There are five events in the Far East, three in Mexico and two in Europe. There are no events scheduled in Hawaii, Florida, Arizona or Texas.

The 13 domestic events are down from 24 on last year’s schedule and 17 on the current season’s schedule.

The biggest tournament change occurs at the LPGA Championship, where Wegmans steps up from its role as a regular tour stop to become temporary host of a major championship at Locust Hill Country Club outside Rochester, N.Y. Wegmans is expected to resume its role as a regular tour stop in 2011 with the LPGA Championship getting a new sponsor and site that year. 

Events that were played this season but aren’t on the 2010 schedule are: the MasterCard Classic, the Michelob Ultra Open, the Sybase Classic, the Corning Classic, and the Samsung World Championship. Phoenix also lost its event with no title sponsor taking over there. The J Golf Classic was played in Phoenix last year but will move to LaCosta, Calif.

The Hana Bank Kolon Championship wasn’t included on the schedule released Wednesday but Evans said the deal is nearly complete. That would give the LPGA its 24th event next season.

2010 LPGA schedule
Feb. 18-21, Honda PTT LPGA Thailand, Chonburi, Thailand (Purse: $1.3 million).
Feb. 25-28, HSBC Women's Champions, Singapore ($1.3 million).
March 25-28, LPGA Classic presented by J Golf, Carlsbad, Calif. ($1.7 million).
April 1-4, Kraft Nabisco Championship, Rancho Mirage, Calif. ($2 million).
April 29-May 2, Tres Marias Championship, Morelia, Mexico ($1.2 million).
May 13-16, Bell Micro LPGA Classic, Mobile, Ala. ($1.3 million).
June 10-13, State Farm Classic, Springfield, Ill. ($1.7 million).
June 18-20, ShopRite LPGA Classic, Galloway, N.J. ($1.5 million). 
June 24-27, LPGA Championship presented by Wegmans, Pittsford, N.Y. ($2.25 million).
July 1-4, Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic, Sylvania, Ohio ($1 million).
July 8-11, U.S. Women's Open, Oakmont, Pa. ($3.25 million).
July 22-25, Evian Masters, Evian-les-Bains, France ($3.25 million).
July 29- Aug. 1, Ricoh Women's British Open, South Port, England ($2.5 million).
Aug. 20-22, Safeway Classic presented by Coca Cola, North Plains, Ore. ($1.5 million).
Aug. 26-29, CN Canadian Women's Open, Winnipeg, Canada (TBD).
Sept. 10-12, P&G Beauty NW Arkansas Championship, Rogers, Ark. ($2 million).
Sept. 30-Oct. 3, Acapulco LPGA Classic, Acapulco, Mexico ($1.1 million).
Oct. 7-10, Navistar LPGA Classic, Prattville, Ala. ($1.3 million).
Oct. 14-17, CVS/pharmacy LPGA Challenge, Danville, Ill. ($1.1 million).
Oct. 29-31, LPGA China (TBD).
Nov. 5-7, Mizuno Classic, Shima-shi, Japan ($1.2 million).
Nov. 11-14, Lorena Ochoa Invitational, Guadalajara, Mexico ($1.1 million).
Nov. 18-21, LPGA Tour Championship (site TBA, purse TBA).