Golf Digest cover in the future for Kraft Nabisco champion Lexi Thompson?

Lexi Thompson, with a three-stroke win over Michelle Wie to win the season’s first major would seem to have earned a shot at the cover of Golf Digest.

The Kraft Nabisco champion may not want to hold her breath, however, even after LPGA commissioner Michael Whan took editors of the industry rag to task for passing over LPGA pros for the featured spot in favor of a PGA Tour’s provocatively posed fiancée.

“Obviously we’re disappointed and frustrated by the editorial direction (and timing) Golf Digest has chosen with the announcement of its most recent magazine cover,” Whan said in a statement Friday night after some tour players ripped Golf Digest for placing Paulina Gretzky and other eye candy on its front panel instead of women who actually make their livings playing golf.

“Frustrating” was the way former No. 1 Stacy Lewis and World Golf Hall of Famer Juli Inkster on Thursday described their sentiments about GD overlooking the stellar talent on their tour in favor of showcasing the neophyte golfer whose claim to fame is as the betrothed of Dustin Johnson and daughter of hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

Whan had even sharper words for the publication, which has had 11 women players on its cover since 1969 and more recently has opted for Arnold Palmer’s favorite model, Kate Upton, and Golf Channel personality, Holly Sonders.

“If a magazine called Golf Digest is interested in showcasing females in the game, yet consistently steers away from the true superstars who’ve made history over the last few years,” Whan said, “something is clearly wrong.”

Whan suggested the magazine whiffed by failing to feature Inbee Park for her three straight major championship wins in 2013, Stacy Lewis’ becoming the first American since 1994 to win player of the year honors, and Lexi Thompson and Lydia Ko becoming the tour’s youngest winners.

The Sonders cover sparked a modicum of controversy but nothing like the outrage voiced by LPGA’ers and the pros and cons on Twitter over the weekend.

Sonders, last year’s cover girl for the inaugural GD fitness issue, said on her network’s “Morning Drive” that the negative reaction to the Gretzky cover “saddens me.”

For Whan, who has worked diligently since taking the reins in 2010 to revive the nearly moribund women’s tour, it was not the first time he has publicly come to the defense of his organization’s players. In December 2011, he chided Golf Magazine for overlooking Yani Tseng’s other-worldly season that made her “the best player on the planet” by an “overwhelming” margin in favor of Rory McIlroy.

“You have to ask yourself one question,” Whan wrote in a letter to the editor about the then 22-year-old who dominated the game on the way to becoming “the youngest player in history -- male or female -- to win five major championships.”

While giving McIlroy his due, Whan suggested sexism was to blame for the editors’ slight of the women’s world No. 1.

”If Yani’s 2011 season had been achieved by a man, would you have come to the same conclusion on the 2011 Golf Magazine Player of the Year?

“I think we all know the answer,” Whan stated.

Friday night, Whan urged fans to return their attention to the action among the contestants at Dinah Shore’s old Mission Hills stomping grounds. Those who heeded his words were treated to a tour de force, as the anticipated Thompson-Wie heavyweight bout turned into an old-fashioned three-shot beat down with Lexi getting the better of her elder at the once and future home of golf’s first grand slam event of the year.

Whan, by the way, responded to players’ pleas to keep the Dinah at the iconic venue that has hosted the tourney for more years in succession than any course other than Augusta National.

“We’re coming back,” Whan told Beth Ann Nichols on Thursday about his intent to return to Rancho Mirage even though Kraft Nabisco’s stint as tourney sponsor ended on Sunday. “And if I come back without a sponsor, I come back without a sponsor.”

The tour would foot the bill for the tournament if necessary, noted Whan, who said three possible sponsors attended the Kraft last week.

“We’ve put a lot of money into tournaments the last couple years, and it’s all turned into good things,” Whan said. “I can’t think of anything more strategically correct to fund than this one, if we had to.”

The LPGA has played an event since 1973 at Mission Hills, with the tournament becoming a major 10 years later. Though seven-time major champion Karrie Webb and other older pros strongly urged that Whan return Dinah Shore’s name -- which graced the tourney title from 1972 through 2000 -- to the marquee, Whan could not promise that.

He did, however, stake his commish-ship on retaining the event.

“In my commissioner tenure,” he said, “I’m not going to lose this major.”