LPGA’s leader is finding some rough

John Branch, New York Times News Service

Published July 11, 2006 at midnight

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GLADSTONE, N.J. — Carolyn Bivens would like you to believe that she is not what you might have heard. "I really don’t have three heads, I don’t have an eye in the middle of my forehead, and I do speak in complete sentences," Bivens, the LPGA commissioner, said in a telephone interview Friday from the organization’s headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla.

The LPGA’s momentum was palpable at last weekend’s HSBC Women’s World Match Play Championships. Big crowds wound through Hamilton Farm Golf Club’s hills and hollows to chase an enticing mix of champions in their prime and future stars approaching their glory.

But there were questions lingering inside the ropes, reaching around the clubhouses and across tournaments throughout the LPGA Tour’s schedule. The overriding one was whether the LPGA’s leadership was contributing to the organization’s momentum or thwarting it.

It has been nearly 10 months since Bivens took over as the LPGA commissioner, and her tenure has been eventful, if not distracting. Seven members of the senior staff, about half the vice presidents, have resigned or been fired. Three of them left on one day in June, just before a major tournament, the LPGA Championship. Two of them had been hired by Bivens.

Coupled with bouts with tournament organizers, occasional flaps with the news media and continued questions about her aggressive marketing approach, Bivens has struggled to stay out of the way of the LPGA’s successes while steering its burgeoning potential.

"The public side of the business continues to take hits, with the story lines," said Jack Benjamin, chairman of the Tournament Owners Association, a board representing the tour’s individual tournaments. "It’s not about the players, but about the management of the tour."

Bivens said businesses typically have turnover in times of transition. She said she was not surprised by the number of top-level managers who had left the LPGA, but was surprised that it had become a story — one centering on her.

"When there is a change at the top of any organization, you can expect some changes," she said.

She declined to discuss the simultaneous departures of the executives Deb Richard, Julie Tyson and Liz Ausman last month, and many close to the LPGA were still not sure if they had resigned or were dismissed.

Richard, who told Golf World magazine last month that "the disappointing part for me is losing faith in the leadership," did not return a message seeking comment. Tyson and Ausman could not be reached.

Barb Trammell, senior vice president for tournament operations, was fired last October, according to Golf World, and could not be reached.

Three others who left all said in telephone interviews Thursday and Friday that they simply found better opportunities.

The chief financial officer Kathy Milthorpe resigned to join International Speedway Corp. just as Bivens arrived. Rob Neal, vice president for tournament business affairs, left in November for Tournament Golf Foundation, which owns and operates two LPGA Tour events. Last spring, Karen Durkin, the chief marketing officer, left to join the NHL in New York.

"The number is high," Neal said of the personnel changes. "But in terms of having some people leave in close proximity to a commissioner change, that’s not at all unusual."

Bivens, 53, replaced Ty Votaw, who resigned after seven years. She vowed to improve the schedule, market individual players better and increase sponsorship money, all to transform the LPGA from a steady niche sport into one more on par with the PGA and the top American leagues.

Her professional background is not golf, but mostly business, media and advertising. She was president of Initiative Media North America, the country’s largest media-services company. She previously held various positions for USA Today, joining the newspaper before it opened in 1982 and climbing to associate publisher in charge of advertising.

For those long associated with the LPGA, Bivens is an outsider, more interested in being a hard-charging chief executive than a watchful shepherd. She is scurrying to update some of the LPGA’s traditional business practices just as the organization idles at an intriguing crossroads.

That is what has rankled some; the LPGA seemed to have reached this point without her. Bivens has jumped in and wants to hit the accelerator.

"The focus here of this organization is to serve the member," she said. "We have this wonderful opportunity with some charismatic personalities playing great golf."

Players have also wondered aloud about the turnover at the LPGA, and about other minicontroversies: the LPGA Championship being moved from CBS to the Golf Channel next year; a battle with the news media over language on tournament credentials that has led some newspapers to temporarily stop covering the tour; and a new world-ranking system that put Michelle Wie second even though she has not won a tournament.

"I think Carolyn is going to be great," the Hall of Fame player Juli Inkster said Thursday. "I think the problem is she’s not a golfer. And golf, even though it seems really big, it’s a really small community. And with any change, you’re going to tick people off.

"Carolyn is trying to get us what we think we’re worth, and it’s a different change. I think we just have to let it play out. I think she’s going to be fine."

Bivens’ biggest battle is with those who run the tournaments. She is pushing to increase the amount of money they pay to be part of the tour, and asking them to take on more of the expenses for things like electronic scoreboards. Some tournaments pay as little as $15,000 a year in sanctioning fees; new tournaments, along with those renewed in the next few years, will be asked to pay $100,000.

Even re-evaluating the majors is on her mind.

"If a fairy godmother dropped down tomorrow, what would be the criteria for a major?" Bivens said.

It has sparked a fear that tradition can be bought, and that long-standing tournaments could fold.

"The new contracts have requirements in them, but with no revenue sources to support them," said Benjamin, also president of the board for the Corning Classic.

He said tournament operators understood that the LPGA’s business model needed updating, but "the road map to get there is a little fuzzy."

"I think what we’re all kind of waiting for is, what is the net gain here with the new regime?" Benjamin said.

Neal has seen both sides, with the LPGA and now as a tournament operator, running events in Phoenix and Portland, Ore.

"People who say what Carolyn is doing is wrong have some very valid points," Neal said. "And Carolyn has some very valid points. We need to work through that because the LPGA product has never been better, and we all need to take advantage of that."

That is what Bivens wants to do, too. She said that there is "a natural and, frankly, healthy tension that exists" between the various parties that do business with the LPGA.

"There is not a week that goes by that I don’t spend time with tournament owners," she said.

Except for the last one. Weather problems kept her stuck at an airport for most of Wednesday as she tried to make a quick visit to Hamilton Farm.

Asked if she was as excited and optimistic about her role as when she first got the job, she did not hesitate.

"Absolutely," she said. "Even more so."

Among the lingering questions, however, is whether everyone else is, too.

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