Tee Sheet: Women’s golf tour unification has been discussed for years, is now the time?

Are there too many tours in professional golf? Is there a world in which all tours fall under the LPGA and PGA TOUR umbrellas? Those questions have permeated throughout the golf landscape, and they’ve only continued to raise more questions in recent months.

The fragmentation of professional golf has plagued the sport and the response has been clear—something, anything, needs to be done. But it (the problem) extends beyond the PGA TOUR and LIV, women’s golf has been having its own debate in merging the two largest entities: the LPGA Tour and the Ladies European Tour (LET) since late 2023.

Fun fact—there are 12 official women's tours counted in women's golf's Rolex Rankings. By no means am I a math wizard, but 12 seems like a lot. Does having that many outlets for professional women's golf bolster the product or hurt it?

The discourse has been chronicled by Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols since the beginning. And most recently, Nichols reported on two LPGA player dads writing a letter to Trump with the subject line: “Transforming LPGA into True Global Golf Tour”.

Inside the Letter

Nichols reports that Albane Valenzuela, a player who was born in New York, lived in her father Alberto's native Mexico before the family moved to Geneva, Switzerland—is leading the charge, along with her father, to establish a global women's golf tour.

Valenzuela met with the heads of the LPGA and LET in Saudi Arabia last week, while her father and another LPGA dad, Rick Pano, sent over a letter to the Trump Organization outlining their plan on what bringing together these Tours could mean.

The proposed plan in the letter suggests a system of tiered events, separated by prize money:

• Tier A would feature the world’s top players with purses of $10 million and above, including the majors.
• Tier B would include events across the world featuring purses between $3 million and $5 million.
• Tier C would have mid-level events of $1 million.
• Tier D would be developmental events for those just starting out at around $500,000.

Modeled after what the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has been doing and their efforts to consolidate and refine women's tennis while increasing prize money—Valenzuela and Pano believe that golf can follow a similar recipe.

Women's tennis has been on a steady incline. Pulling in more views, more fan engagement, and player recognition has increased despite us living in a post-Serena Williams era. It can be done and it's actually an incredible model to follow.

Women's golf leaders aren't blind to the facts, but what's taking so long for change to be implemented?

Merger Talks Have Been Ongoing (for a While Now)

The letter is a great calling out catalyst—but talks of an LPGA/LET merger are not new.

Before the Marcoux-Samaan era, former commissioner Mike Whan, in tandem with LET leadership, set out to expand and develop playing opportunities for women in Europe back in November 2019.

In this partnership, the tours combined resources to fast track the expansion of the LET schedule. The overall goal was for an immediate increase in playing opportunities for women in Europe, and have the schedule growth lead to more financial opportunities and an optional pathway to the LPGA for the tour’s top performers. More events, played in more regions, for more money—great plan!

And within 5 years, the LET expanded from 20 official events played in 13 countries to now having 30 events in 20 countries with prize money totaling out to €39 million.

The joint venture was a success, so where's the disconnect in unifying both the LPGA and LET now?

Well, in November 2023 a meeting (which was a postponement from 2022) between the heads of each tour took place to vote on a potential merger, but was quickly adjourned with no explanation, and the vote was subsequently postponed...again.

A couple of months after the fact, former commissioner Marcoux-Samaan provided a response to the unresolved situation. Golf Saudi (a division of the PIF) is a significant partner of the LET, providing nearly a third of the tour's prize fund, and submitted a last-minute request for more information on the merger.

According to Marcoux Samaan in another post from Golfweek, “Golf Saudi wanted to ensure that they fully understood any risks, implications, and opportunities for the Aramco Saudi Ladies International and Aramco Team Series before finalizing their commitment to the events in 2024.”

The LET's involvement with Golf Saudi, or rather Golf Saudi's involvement in the LET raises many flags.

The biggest flag? The human rights abuse allegations—especially toward women—Saudi Arabia faces.

The longest standing women's sports organization can not go into a merging situation of this nature lightly. This is a delicate dance. There's larger messaging involved and it's bigger than money. Growing the game has always been bigger than the money, despite dollar signs being a large component of golf's future.

How Would Unifying Help?

But it all boils down to application. For argument's sake, let's say that in a perfect world all parties come to agreement, and a successful merger takes place. How would it benefit weeks where smaller LPGA Tour events take place and don't get the same amount of love?

Take this week—and the entirety of the Asia Swing for that matter—these fields are missing major stars. Players are more inclined to take weeks off for rest and recovery—and understandably so. They travel across the globe, where purses aren't as big, TV coverage is sparse at best, and it feels as though the wind has been taken out of the season's sails a bit. With such a big kick off in late January, it feels counterintuitive to take away opportunity for attention so soon. The gear up to majors season requires some heavy lifting, you need a couple high-stakes events to spark excitement. Time is on the LPGA's side, its first major won't take place until late April, but over a month's worth of competition time without your biggest stars is a tough sell for fans and potential new viewers.

Combining resources, pulling together prize money to bolstering events is essential to ensure that the best of the best are going head to head as many times as possible.

The solution isn't adding more events, it's making them more high quality in caliber. Securing better, more championship level courses. Having event set ups that are efficient and easy for the fan experience—all which requires more sponsors...and more money.

At this moment in time—players are being forced to pick between events and that's only hurting the women's golf product. Creating a more consolidated system would alleviate the pressure play in events that may not even serve them well. It means nothing to have a season-ending tour championship with a $4 million winner's payout, when most players are off competing in events that don't contribute to the season long points race to even give them a shot at earning record-breaking money.