LPGA/PGA, why does it have to be separate?

[ThinkingPlus]

5 minutes ago, 2bGood said:

I pulled the 2022 stats:

 

1. Cameron Champ - 339.5

195. Greg Sonnier - 257.3

 

Yes this will change as the season goes on.

 

The point is still the same though - some men drive it way further than other men but all are expected to compete from the same tees. If you were going to have everyone compete together I don't think it makes sense for some competitors to get player a shorter course then others are we going to also make the PGA a net competition and get handicaps involved? 

The 2022 stats are currently statistically insufficient as you pointed out.  Usually in a mixed event they try and take pure distance out of the equation by adjusting tees.  To some this would be fair; to others not so much.  Course setup is as big a factor.  Bottom line is these mixed events always have problems and shouldn't be played or only rarely at most.

[KBong]

35 minutes ago, MagicClassic407 said:

 

We're too busy doing other things. 🥴

 

Once again Young Lady you NEVER FAIL us with your WONDERFUL gif's.

Kudos!

[2bGood]

11 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

The 2022 stats are currently statistically insufficient as you pointed out.  Usually in a mixed event they try and take pure distance out of the equation by adjusting tees.  To some this would be fair; to others not so much.  Course setup is as big a factor.  Bottom line is these mixed events always have problems and shouldn't be played or only rarely at most.

 

They are fun to watch - just can't see there being a true mixed tee competitive events. 

 

Love the LPGA, but I do think it is a shame there is not much money in it. 

[18majors]

15 minutes ago, 2bGood said:

Love the LPGA, but I do think it is a shame there is not much money in it. 

 

 

Is this true anymore?  This week we've a $3.0 million purse regular tour event; 2022 AIG Women's Open will have a purse no less than $6.8 million.  The 2022 USWO will have a purse of $8.0 million or more if USGA is successful in getting a presenting sponsor.

 

I agree it's still less than half of PGA Tour, but the trend is good!

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by 18majors

[2bGood]

On 10/4/2021 at 1:25 PM, 18majors said:

 

 

Is this true anymore?  This week we've a $3.0 million purse regular tour event; 2022 AIG Women's Open will have a purse no less than $6.8 million.  The 2022 USWO will have a purse of $8.0 million or more if USGA is successful in getting a presenting sponsor.

 

I agree it's still less than half of  PGA Tour, but the trend is good!

 

Trend is good. But lets say you are the 100th best female golfer in the world you make $119K. Less travel expenses, caddies etc. Your take home is less than being an active teaching pro. 

 

It is still the case that many of the players at LPGA events stay with members from the course they are playing at to keep expenses down. It is a tough slog unless you are at the top or are attractive to sponsors for a variety of reasons. 

Edited November 28, 2021 by 2bGood

[18majors]

28 minutes ago, 2bGood said:

Trend is good. But lets say you are the 100th best female golfer in the world you make $119K. Less travel expenses, caddies etc. Your take home is less that being a an active teaching pro. 

 

 

 

Understood, it's not ideal as it is. 

 

For the lower rung players, the situation is better in Japan and Korea.   Even though their purses are much less than LPGA, but every player has a corporate sponsor to provide the basic need.

 

That's what the new commissioner should strive to achieve.  It needs to be a two prong approaches:

1.   Continue to drive up the overall purses
2.   Drive corporations to widen their endorsement circles

 

 

 

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by 18majors

[MtlJeff]

2 hours ago, 4bees said:

thanks for a productive comment.  and LMAO to the ex describing....

 

I completely agree with the women not watching women sports.  lets be honest, the majority of people watching the LPGA are old men or former NCAA/LPGA members.  Very seldom do I recall any women I know talking about golf, let alone ANY woman sports.

 

I am realistic, I think this should be something to discuss at least in the near future.  Times are greatly changing.  I am not pushing for women to do everything that men do in sports.  Not by any means.  And this has more so little to do with my daughter than it does with my true feelings towards mens and womens golf.  

 

 

 

I plan on watching tons of women's sports with my daughter, and taking her to an LPGA event if it comes back to MTL like it has in the past. I would like for her to see women play sports at a high level.

 

Economics aside, i think it's just good for women to support other women--much in the same way we do

 

And at the end of the day, if millions of women want to watch the LPGA or WNBA--they will end up on TV and those ladies will make a fortune--and good for them if they do!

[Nels55]

3 hours ago, BlackDiamondPar5 said:

Very true about women not watching women's sports. I used to go to the LPGA Championship when it was held outside Rochester NY.  The men in attendance far exceeded the women in attendance... it wasn't even close.   Yes women often attended but usually with guys, you hardly ever saw a group of women there together without guys.  

 

Another move they made that weakened a loyal fan base was them moving the event out of Western NY after they built up a solid fan base over ~40 years.  It was a big annual event and golfers in the region looked forward to it.   Yeah I get it the big sponsor dropped out, but the fans attendance was always very strong.  I've since heard the attendance after the move (to where ever it is now, I don't care anymore) is weak by comparison.   My family and friends used to follow the women on tour, but since moving out of the region hardly anyone talks about women's Pro golf.     Sure Western NY isn't a huge market but it was a loyal market.  Not sure if they've pulled similar moves elsewhere but if they have I wouldn't know because I don't follow the LPGA anymore. 

I went to the US Women's Open at CordeValle Golf Club in 2016 on a weekday and I noticed a number of groups of women.  They definitely were not worried about being with guys...

[KBong]

11 minutes ago, Nels55 said:

I went to the US Women's Open at CordeValle Golf Club in 2016 on a weekday and I noticed a number of groups of women.  They definitely were not worried about being with guys...

Attack Girls?

 

 

[Rapidcat]

7 hours ago, KBong said:

No.

My question is .....are there a lot of Asian OZ residents who play a lot of golf at your local courses?

 

There are many many courses here with Asian golfers....many times the dominant demographic on the tee sheets.

Ok, got it.

 

Asian Oz residents aren't over-represented in my city, will be proportional to their % of the total population.

 

You've mentioned Korean golfers in Van, note that we don't have a large Korean population in Oz, maybe 200k by birth or ancestry vs a total population of 26m.

[2bGood]

15 hours ago, Nels55 said:

I went to the US Women's Open at CordeValle Golf Club in 2016 on a weekday and I noticed a number of groups of women.  They definitely were not worried about being with guys...

Likely true but the viewerships stats say that the PGA tour gets a larger percentage of their viewership from women than the LPGA does with both tours having more male fans than women.

 

Some question why women are less likely to support the LPGA than the PGA, but I don't think that is what is going on.

 

The research says that men are more avid sports fan than women on average and that less accessible a sports is, the less likely non-avid fans are drawn to it. When you look at it that way it makes more sense. If you put the Korn Ferry tour into the mix it enjoys a much smaller female audience than the LPGA. For me the issues is not that the average female fan does not support Womens sports, but rather the average female fan is not as fanatical about sports (maybe they have a life) and won't watch every and anything they can find.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by 2bGood

[Nels55]

3 hours ago, 2bGood said:

Likely true but the viewerships stats say that the PGA tour gets a larger percentage of their viewership from women than the LPGA does with both tours having more male fans than women.

 

Some question why women are less likely to support the LPGA than the PGA, but I don't think that is what is going on.

 

The research says that men are more avid sports fan than women on average and that less accessible a sports are less likely to have non-avid fans are drawn to it. When you look at it that way it makes more sense. If you put the Korn Ferry tour into the mix it enjoys a much smaller female audience than the LPGA. For me that the issues is not that the average female fan does not support Womens sports, but rather the average female fan is not as fanatical about sports (maybe they have a life) and won't watch every and anything they can find.

 

 

Oh, I was not commenting on any of the things that you mentioned.  I don't think that the demographic that I saw there amounts to all that much in the way of viewership.

[Raving Shanker]

13 hours ago, KBong said:

No.

My question is .....are there a lot of Asian OZ residents who play a lot of golf at your local courses?

 

There are many many courses here with Asian golfers....many times the dominant demographic on the tee sheets.

My club is about 15% Asian. Half of those are Korean, and the other half are from everywhere else.

 

Koreans are a tiny proportion of the population here. We have a very large Chinese population, who predominantly don't play golf.

[2bGood]

7 hours ago, Nels55 said:

Oh, I was not commenting on any of the things that you mentioned.  I don't think that the demographic that I saw there amounts to all that much in the way of viewership.

Yes I understand the lower viewership/fanbase overall. I just always found it interesting that female fans make smaller percentage of LPGA fan v PGA fans. The PGA is 35% female fan base for regular events and the LPGA fan base is 25% women at regular events and only jumps to 35% for Majors. It seems counterintuitive, but see my post above above avid fans. 

 

Of course in pure numbers, more women watch the PGA than people watch the PGA. 

Edited October 5, 2021 by 2bGood

[KBong]

12 hours ago, Rapidcat said:

Ok, got it.

 

Asian Oz residents aren't over-represented in my city, will be proportional to their % of the total population.

 

You've mentioned Korean golfers in Van, note that we don't have a large Korean population in Oz, maybe 200k by birth or ancestry vs a total population of 26m.

That's low....I would have thought it would be higher in Oz.

 

As of 2016....there are 6,100,000 or 17.7% of our 34,000,000 population that are Asian.

[KBong]

6 hours ago, Raving Shanker said:

My club is about 15% Asian. Half of those are Korean, and the other half are from everywhere else.

 

Koreans are a tiny proportion of the population here. We have a very large Chinese population, who predominantly don't play golf.

There are about 500,000 Chinese and about 50,000 Koreans in Metro Vancouver.

The Chinese do love golf but not to the extent of the Koreans.

If the population was reversed....I can't imagine how expensive and impossible it would be to play golf here.

Golf is very very popular here.

 

Many courses have a ton of Koreans playing golf.

I'm a twilight member.....and it's about 85%+ Korean....the rest of the membership is easily 50+ Koreans.

[Rapidcat]

1 minute ago, KBong said:

That's low....I would have thought it would be higher in Oz.

 

As of 2016....there are 6,100,000 or 17.7% of our 34,000,000 population that are Asian.

Our Asian ancestry to total population is only a touch behind Canada: Total population is up to 3,550,882 (2016) or 16.3% of Australia's population (will be up a bit as the last census is 5 years old).

 

Not many Koreans (2/3'ds of whom live in Sydney) and as @Raving Shanker noted, the Chinese pop aren't so into golf. Included in the 16.3% are Indian Australians at 3% of total population, not really golfers either.

[MagicClassic407]

3 hours ago, 2bGood said:

Of course in pure numbers, more women watch the PGA than people watch the PGA.

It would be nice if the LPGA were more accessible in order to build more of a fan base, p**** or no p****!!  Not every one, every bar, every hotel room has access to The (freaking) Golf Channel. The PGA has major network access ALWAYS, available EVERYWHERE. 

[KBong]

1 hour ago, MagicClassic407 said:

It would be nice if the LPGA were more accessible in order to build more of a fan base, p**** or no p****!!  Not every one, every bar, every hotel room has access to The (freaking) Golf Channel. The PGA has major network access ALWAYS, available EVERYWHERE. 

Supply & Demand.

It's what fans/people want to see on TV.

 

I can't speak for the US...but up here in Canada.

After the Tour Championship and with the start of the college & NFL season.....the PGA tour is now seen on GC...Thurs to Sun..... and no longer on network TV here on Sat-Sun.

People prefer to watch football over golf on the weekends on network TV...nowadays and the MLB playoffs are starting too....also the start of NBA and NHL season too.

[2bGood]

1 hour ago, MagicClassic407 said:

It would be nice if the LPGA were more accessible in order to build more of a fan base, p**** or no p****!!  Not every one, every bar, every hotel room has access to The (freaking) Golf Channel. The PGA has major network access ALWAYS, available EVERYWHERE. 

I guess chicken or egg. The networks are not stupid, they are looking for content all the time and if they know something will draw a big audience they literally fight over and bid for who gets the rights to it. It was not that long ago the LPGA paid money to get Network TV exposure rather than got paid.

 

Given that there are so many platforms now it would be nice to see the LPGA try something a bit new. It is pretty crazy what the FI Netflix series did to broaden fan base.

[Argonne69]

1 hour ago, 2bGood said:

I guess chicken or egg. The networks are not stupid, they are looking for content all the time and if they know something will draw a big audience they literally fight over and bid for who gets the rights to it. It was not that long ago the LPGA paid money to get Network TV exposure rather than got paid.

 

Given that there are so many platforms now it would be nice to see the LPGA try something a bit new. It is pretty crazy what the FI Netflix series did to broaden fan base.

 

If I'm not mistaken the LPGA still pays for TV time, even on the Golf Channel.

 

[2bGood]

6 minutes ago, Argonne69 said:

 

If I'm not mistaken the LPGA still pays for TV time, even on the Golf Channel.

 

I think they got past that when they did the joint deal with the PGA. Court documents show in that deal the PGA gets almost all the revenue (the Champions and Korn Ferry are under their umbrellas too) but the LPGA is not paying anything. 

[KBong]

Building on theme that few watch women's sports.

There's a WTA event on TSN2 now...it's at Indian Wells, CA....the stadium is virtually empty.

 

I don't watch much tennis except for the 4 majors....is this lack of fans common at WTA events?

The field is also very weak.....lots of top ranked pros are absent.

 

IMO...women's tennis benefits so much by playing CONCURRENTLY with men's tennis at the tennis majors.

[18majors]

9 minutes ago, KBong said:

There's a WTA event on TSN2 now...it's at Indian Wells, CA....the stadium is virtually empty.

 

 

 

BNP Paribas Open is the biggest tennis event outside of the four majors, it's a joint ATP and WTA event.

 

BNP Paribas Open

[KBong]

10 minutes ago, 18majors said:

 

 

BNP Paribas Open is the biggest tennis event outside of the four majors, it's a joint ATP and WTA event.

 

BNP Paribas Open

Maybe they should move this event to Houston so fans will show up to watch.🤣

 

It's like watching the CFL...empty stadium.

[Strategery]

On 9/28/2021 at 11:07 AM, Argonne69 said:

The women do have the ability to play with the men.

 

No. This thread is all lose.

[kenstl]

I love watching the LPGA as well, but I don't understand why people want to join the two.  For what?  Why would you want to turn the PGA in to a handicapped event?  The PGA is for the top golfers (of any sex) from what I understand.  If you can play, go play.  

 

All of the whining about $$, TV time, etc, always comes back to simple economics unless you want to turn sports in to a socialist model.  That seems to work for college sports and rightfully so, as Title IX broadened the base of all sports, but that was becasue federal funds were involved.  It has been a big win for woman sports in college and I think it has been very good for the college atmosphere.  

 

But professional sports is not a right, it is a business, and thankfully it is one of the remaining areas where performance and results rule the day.  A true sport.  And becasue of that, it is great entertainment.  As soon as you handicap it, it quickly loses a true winner in my mind, as you always wonder who was the best that day.  It just turns in to a show, which is fine at times and I would like to see some mixed events, but not as a rule

[KBong]

42 minutes ago, kenstl said:

but I don't understand why people want to join the two.  For what?

The PGA is for the top golfers (of any sex) from what I understand.  If you can play, go play.  

 

But professional sports is not a right, it is a business, and thankfully it is one of the remaining areas where performance and results rule the day.  

[2bGood]

3 hours ago, kenstl said:

I love watching the LPGA as well, but I don't understand why people want to join the two.  For what?  Why would you want to turn the PGA in to a handicapped event?  The PGA is for the top golfers (of any sex) from what I understand.  If you can play, go play.  

 

All of the whining about $$, TV time, etc, always comes back to simple economics unless you want to turn sports in to a socialist model.  That seems to work for college sports and rightfully so, as Title IX broadened the base of all sports, but that was becasue federal funds were involved.  It has been a big win for woman sports in college and I think it has been very good for the college atmosphere.  

 

But professional sports is not a right, it is a business, and thankfully it is one of the remaining areas where performance and results rule the day.  A true sport.  And becasue of that, it is great entertainment.  As soon as you handicap it, it quickly loses a true winner in my mind, as you always wonder who was the best that day.  It just turns in to a show, which is fine at times and I would like to see some mixed events, but not as a rule

Truth be told a wildly low percentage -

9line under 1%) of people that follow golf (PGA or LPGA) want to see the sports combined. It is more of fringe hypothetical that people like to chat about. 

Edited November 28, 2021 by 2bGood

[djmohab2]

I'm genetically deficient to DJ, Rory, etc. at 5'8", 135 lbs and can only drive the ball 260. Would I get to play from these "forward" tees? After all, gender doesn't matter, just how far you can hit the ball, in this supposed merged tour.

And your tripe about soccer is false. The 2015 USWNT, the same squad that won the Women's World Cup that year, scrimmaged a U-15 boys team...and lost. Bad.