Mike Whan’s LPGA: A League of Their Own

The LPGA, preparing to kick off its 2015 season during Super Bowl week, has a tough act to follow -- its own, after last year’s sensational campaign.

Every sports league or federation should be fortunate enough to have such a problem, especially considering where the women’s tour is now and how it got there. Indeed, with 2014 U.S. Open winner Michelle Wie and Rookie of the Year Lydia Ko, 2015 rookie Cheyenne Woods, and world Nos. 1 and 3, Inbee Park and Stacy Lewis, headlining a star-studded roster at this season’s curtain-raising Coates Golf Championship on January 28, commissioner Mike Whan & Co. expect to pick up right where they left off in November.

“Those are big shoes to [fill], but we’ve got another great schedule with one more event than we had last year,” seven-time major champion Karrie Webb told SB Nation by phone recently. “It’s the same cast of players, and maybe a couple of new ones, to do what they did last year to make for an exciting year.”

For the first time since 2004, the LPGA will begin close to home for its many Sunshine State-based members. The inaugural Ocala event -- the linchpin of a 2015 schedule featuring 33 tourneys and the healthiest purses in tour history -- will host 19 of the top 20, and 91 of the top 100 players in women’s golf.

“The field strength alone shows how excited the tour is to be here and to play in Florida, in a place where a lot of the players live,” Morgan Pressel said during a recent press conference at Golden Ocala Golf and Equestrian Club to promote the four-day, 120-player competition.

★★★

Not that long ago, 2007 Kraft Nabisco champion Pressel and her colleagues would have been thrilled to be playing anywhere. Prior to the arrival of Whan, who took the reins from the ousted Carolyn Bivens in 2010, the very survival of the LPGA was at stake, with playing opportunities and prize money shrinking and morale throughout the organization at an all-time low.

“In some years, the majority of the players were unhappy with either a commissioner or something the staff had done,” recalled Webb, a 19-year tour veteran whose 41 LPGA victories include the two she earned in 2014. “It was almost us against them and, really, we should all be together as a team.”

Now, thanks to Whan’s leadership and as intriguing a slate of competitors and story lines since the glory days of Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, such contentiousness is long gone, if not totally forgotten.

“I really feel like there’s a lot of trust there now that really had eroded away before Mike came in,” said Webb, a World Golf Hall of Famer who’s familiar with the business side of things from her four years on the board. “I feel like players can just play without worrying about something they’d heard from a tournament sponsor or a tournament director.”

★★★

From Jessica Korda’s one-shot win over Lewis to open the season, to Ko’s tap-in for par on the fourth sudden-death playoff hole to close it out and net the biggest payday in women’s golf history, Whan could not have scripted a more dramatic narrative than the one that played out last year. Indeed, each event unfolded like a chapter in a storybook:

Wie and Lexi Thompson slugging it out in the season’s first major, with Thompson prevailing at Mission Hills.

Wie, a teen prodigy many believed had failed to live up to her hype, finally breaking through and capturing her first grand slam event, the U.S. Women’s Open, after ending a four-year winless drought earlier in the year.

Ko, the 17-year-old phenom, winning three times, smashing every age-related mark on tour, and hitting the jackpot at the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship and Race to the CME Globe by pocketing a cool $1.5 million.

Lewis winning the triple crown by sweeping Player of the Year, Vare Trophy (lowest scoring average), and season money title honors.

Paula Creamer draining that “miracle” 75-foot eagle putt to win the HSBC Women’s Championship.

“Mighty Mo” Martin, giving hope to underdogs everywhere, making a spectacular eagle at the last to seal her Women’s British Open victory.

Christina Kim overcoming her public battle with depression and a nine-year losing streak to record an emotional playoff win at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational.

With any one of those accounts providing a season’s worth of compelling theater, the moribund association that Whan inherited now looks ahead to a future that promises upwards of $61 million in total purses and more playing opportunities for golfers outside the top ranks.

“My rookie year, I didn’t play a whole lot ... There were not many tournaments at all and we were on the verge of losing tournaments,” said Alison Walshe, 178th in the Rolex Rankings.

“You were thinking worst-case scenarios, but now it’s different,” said Walshe, whose 2010 rookie season coincided with Whan’s. “We’re almost like the boys [on the PGA Tour], where you can kind of pick and choose some tournaments and playing every week is almost too much.”

Webb agreed 33 was the sweet spot for the LPGA, whose players appreciate time off from the rigors of travel and competition. Perhaps even more important is too many contests on the schedule can dilute the return on underwriters’ investments if top golfers skip their events.

“Even at that number, there are going to be some tournaments where sponsors and tournament operators are not going to be happy with their fields,” said Webb, who has played an average of 20 tilts over the past four years, which means she would give a pass to 13 this year. “Some of the younger top players play three, four, five more than that but it’s still going to be a handful of tournaments that don’t have strong fields.”

★★★

Webb’s reasoning goes to the heart of the philosophies Whan has instilled in the culture of his organization: act like a founder and eat, breathe and sleep sponsors.

“You have to spend more time talking about what’s important to HSBC than what’s important to the LPGA,” Whan explained. “If you don’t, you’re going to wake up looking for a replacement for HSBC.”

Whan, who said he could easily add another five tournaments to the schedule, conceded that his sponsors-first philosophy was “unique in sports.” It does not happen at every venue, but players have been known to leave a course during play to greet and thank their benefactors.

That’s one way LPGA golfers prove why, as their club’s motto says, “it’s different out here.” Such unorthodox practices set the LPGA apart from other athletic establishments.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to have a time when [NFL quarterback] Tony Romo’s going to hop over from the bench and yell up to some vice president of a bank, ‘Hey, thanks for what you’re doing!’” Whan quipped. “It’s our calling card. We’re the only sport in the world where the athletes are required to learn about the check writers before they tee off.”

Judd Silverman, tournament director of the Marathon Classic since its inception in 1984, marveled at how Whan ignited a renewed passion in the players -- who have always been their tour’s most ardent ambassadors -- to do “whatever it takes to give sponsors their money’s worth.

“Not only are they totally dedicated athletes, but they understand they have to go the extra mile to do things during [tournament] week to interact with the sponsors -- going to dinners, and receptions, and things outside the golf course,” said Silverman, who also praised the “great team” Whan put together. “I just give them all the credit in the world because of their dedication and their energy. It takes a lot to be totally dedicated to your game but then to go back to the hotel and get all dressed up and go to a reception to meet and greet sponsors.”

That mindset is why Whan balks at adding tournaments just to fill in the calendar.

“What I don’t want to do,” he said, “is have 43 events, have the top players in the world play the same 30 a year they’ve been playing for 60 years, and then have me go around the country or world talking to CEOs at 15 different companies trying to explain why the big check they wrote didn’t get them the field or the media exposure they wanted.”

Rather than bulk up the schedule, Whan intends to add muscle to the events already booked. When necessary, and now in the enviable position of having would-be patrons eager to sign on, Whan would even swap a stronger competition for one that may underperform.

“You have to be willing to upgrade where you can,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you sit pat, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to grow purses, exposure, and on-site attendance; it just makes you say, that to be part of this team you’ve got to have the best of the best.”

★★★

Whan, a consultant whose most recent golf-business experience had been more than a decade earlier when he applied for the position that now fits him like a glove, was not a surefire hire.

As vice president and general manager with Wilson Sporting Goods from 1994-1995, he was responsible for golf ball and glove operations, marketing, two manufacturing facilities, and research and development. For the next four years, Whan served in several capacities, including executive VP/GM for North America, with TaylorMade.

After the stormy tenure of Bivens, who had no golf background before taking control of the LPGA, Whan’s resume likely did not dazzle his future employers. But he aced the interview process with his dynamism, self-confidence and people skills.

Those intangible qualities were key as Whan set about winning back a tour and its associates embittered by the failed tactics of his predecessor.

Carolyn Bivens gets well-deserved credit for inking a long-term deal with Golf Channel that continues to pay dividends, with some 410 hours of television coverage scheduled for 2015 -- up from 380 hours last year. And she would likely have survived the eventual player revolt that resulted in her removal -- even after her doomed and ill-considered attempt to suspend or fine non-English-speaking players -- if she had not lost sponsors and tournaments turned off by her insistence that they pick up more of the tab for LPGA events.

Enter Whan, who set about convincing players and staffers to buy into the approach that the LPGA owed everything it was to those who paved the way, and everything it could become to its sponsors. Listening to, and really understanding, what those who write the checks want remains job one.

“Remember who the customer is,” said LPGA president Vicki Goetze-Ackerman. “That’s just something that’s ingrained in us now. It was probably there at one point and definitely lost, and now it’s front and center again.”

Silverman, who likely spoke for his associates in other markets, was thankful Whan swooped in and repaired the tour’s ties with its tournament affiliates. Preferring not to discuss the bad old days in the immediate wake of Bivens’ regime, when the former Jamie Farr Toledo Classic was on the verge of dissolution due to shrinking purses and the lack of a prominent title sponsor, Silverman was effusive about the positive changes Whan has generated.

“He reestablished unity, trust, collaboration, partnership with his customers -- the tournaments,” said Silverman, a PGA Tour caddie in another life who was the driving force behind bringing women’s professional golf to his hometown.

The northwest Ohio venue has been a stop on the LPGA every season, except 1986 and 2011, which, without Whan’s personal engagement with his partners, was destined to be its last year.

“It was a whole philosophical change than what we were used to before. His philosophy is the ‘tournaments are the LPGA’s partners and customers, and we have to do everything we can to support them,’” Silverman said. “That was a huge step forward and he backed up everything he said and reestablished a real sense of unity and collaboration between the tour and its member tournaments.”

★★★

Whan’s tenure has certainly not been without its challenges or conflicts. The triple whammy of a sour economy, Bivens’ poor management, and the loss of the tour’s most popular superstars to retirement (Sorenstam in 2008 and Ochoa two years later) resulted in a barebones schedule of 23 events in 2011, his second year at the helm.

(Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

That number -- which included only 11 full-field tourneys -- was the smallest since 1971, according to Ron Sirak, who also noted at the time that players competed for the stingiest purses since 2001.

Then there was Whan’s penchant for out-of-the-box thinking, which Goetze-Ackerman, a former tour player, labeled “fantastic,” but which has also caused her to take a few steps back at times.

“He has some ideas that are like, ‘Whoa, where are you coming from on that one?’” she said with a laugh. “But I think that is what makes him great, because he pushes someone like me, a golfer, and makes me think in a whole new light. And I push him from a standpoint that, ‘Hey, that’s not golf.’”

Webb can attest to that.

“Mike has made some pretty bold decisions sometimes, some that I didn’t necessarily agree with,” she said. “But he has done really well in pulling it off and proving people wrong, myself included.”

For sure, Whan’s audacity almost backfired when he hatched a scheme to have contestants compete for a “mock purse” in the inaugural Founders Cup to launch the 2011 season. At the time, most players publicly boosted the idea of honoring the women who pioneered their tour -- a notion Whan pursued doggedly because of his belief in paying tribute to and celebrating LPGA legends.

There was, however, hesitation about playing for free, a concern that Whan alleviated by tinkering with the charity component, ensuring that the phantom prize money would count as actual cash on the money list, and with other fixes.

“I wasn’t a critic of the Founders Cup, I loved the concept right from the beginning,” said Webb, who won the cup that first year and again in 2014. “But I knew the tournament would have trouble getting strong fields for years to come if we continued to play for no money … Because we only had 23 events, to add a tournament to the schedule that had no purse, for the players was quite controversial.”

Fast forward five years and the Founders Cup is one of the highlights on the LPGA docket. And this March, when Webb hopes to defend her title, she and her confederates will vie for a $1.5 million purse.

★★★

Successes like the Founders Cup, the FedEx Cup-like Race to the CME Globe, and the International Crown -- a biennial global team-match play event similar to the men’s Presidents Cup that’s contested in years opposite the Solheim Cup -- have only fueled Whan’s creative drive. For an athletic endeavor he has dubbed “Past, Present, and Future,” he hopes to have the top 120 players from the the LPGA, the best 10 from the Symetra Tour, and the top 10 from the Legends Tour play together.

Legends players are “natural teachers and they don’t even know they’re doing it,” said Whan, who believes younger players have so much to learn from their “mentors.”

”If a rookie on tour hears [2013 Solheim Cup captain] Meg Mallon say, ‘My first year I missed every cut and had to go back to q-school,’” Whan noted, “a young 22-year-old realizes ‘Meg Mallon won 18 times and four majors, and me struggling my rookie year is not going to be my full resume.’

“Sometimes it takes somebody like that to tell you that because your coach, your dad, your commissioner can tell you that all they want, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Whan plans to test the concept next year at the Symetra Tour’s Chico’s Patty Berg Memorial, where Symetra (the LPGA feeder tour) and Legends (think men’s Champions Tour) golfers will play the same course at the same time.

★★★

What he has accomplished in his first five years with the tour would be a career for almost anyone else -- though the folks who pay his salary hope he stays put for years to come.

“We’re doing everything possible to incentivize him to stay,” said Webb, whose stint on the board ended last year. “Mike loves a challenge and if he gets us back to where he believes we should be, I feel like he’s one of those guys that’s a fixer -- if he feels like he’s fixed it he might not feel like the challenge is there for him to stay.”

Goetze-Ackerman echoed Webb’s sentiment.

“Did he get us out of the crisis? Absolutely. Did he get us to a great place? Absolutely,” she said. “But I believe he feels there’s so much more potential, growth, and possibilities within the tour ... I know that he knows there’s more that he can and will do during his time that he is with us.”

Indeed, Whan, who’s under contract through 2016, said he was far from finished doing what he set out to accomplish when he signed on with the LPGA Tour.

“If we consider this [33 events, larger purses] a success, then shame on us,” he said. “Getting from 22 back to 34 [with this year’s Solheim Cup] events — that can’t be our legacy, that can’t be what were remembered for. So let’s make sure we’re shooting bigger than that, or even who wins what tournament or how well the Race to the Globe went.

“The hard part, sometimes,” Whan said, “is just to stop, turn that off, and say ‘where do we really want to be three years from now,’ because if it’s the same place we are now then we’re really not doing our jobs.”

Music to the ears of everyone involved with the LPGA.