PGA – LPGA Collaborative Initiative: For the Good of the Game
The PGA-LPGA strategic alliance is another positive step toward equity and parity in golf.
The PGA TOUR and the LPGA have simultaneously announced a “long-term, written strategic alliance agreement designed to further promote the growth of golf.” While this move may in fact mirror the R&A-LGU merger that was announced earlier this week, it feels substantially different.
Read more about the R&A – LGU merger announcement
This is a collaboration that apparently has its roots in the work both organizations have done inside the World Golf Federation as the Federation has crafted and guided golf’s return to the Olympic venue. In other words, it’s a collaboration that began with a shared goal for the sport that transcended traditional organizational boundaries. Clearly, growing the game isn’t gender-specific.
The announcement provided some clues about what this collaboration will involve going forward:
"This partnership between the leading men’s and women’s professional golf tours will include areas such as schedule coordination, joint marketing programs, domestic television representation, digital media and exploring the potential development of joint events."
The PGA TOUR and the LPGA will bring two skill sets and some complementary strengths to such a collaboration. An example or two illustrate my point.
The LPGA is a much more internationalized organization in terms of both membership and tournament venues. I look for this more globalized approach to the game to begin to seep into the PGA weltanschauung. At the same time, the PGA has a far more sophisticated marketing apparatus in place that will certainly benefit the LPGA going forward. This is the kind of reciprocity that will enrich both organizations and at the same time grow the game we love.
I hope that the agreement will soon result in conjoint events like the 2014 US Open-US Women’s Open at Pinehurst #2. While that USGA initiative was the result of a scheduling snafu rather than a conscious effort to transcend traditional gender-based barriers, it nontheless demonstrated the efficacy of the model.
We’ve seen glimmers of the potential this collaboration carries in the Drive, Chip and Putt Championship, an initiative among the USGA, PGA of America, and The Masters. The immensely popular Drive, Chip & Putt easily devised strategies to accommodate age and gender differentials in a competition that’s grown like wildfire from an experiment to a year-long international youth event.
Read more about how the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship could expand
Most encouraging in the announcement was the emphatic assurance that the PGA TOUR and the LPGA will remain independent, autonomous organizations. This is a major difference from the R&A – LGU organizational merger, which does seem to anticipate a loss of autonomy.
". . . the alliance . . . involves no formal financial investment or transfer of ownership or control. Both parties remain wholly separate and independent organizations."
This autonomy is probably more important for the LPGA than for the PGA TOUR, simply because the LPGA was born in a crucible of discrimination – both subtle and explicit – against professional women golfers and the LPGA has long-represented a beacon of hope for girls and women who love the game and struggle at every level to claim their right to take the tee.
Olympic golf may well be a bit of a snarl this year in Rio, but the impact of golf’s return to the Olympic venue is going to have consequences well beyond the immediate conundrum of Rio.
Next: Golf's Gender Wars: The Aussies are Leading
Even as golf’s gender wars ease at the highest levels, that struggle will continue at the munis and the country clubs where women’s leagues fight for tee times and in high schools where the few girls often practice with the more well-populated boys teams. Nevertheless, FORE!