Lexi Thompson, Yani Tseng, Michelle Wie and Paula CreamerThe Associated Press
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - A dry board in the office of LPGA Tour Commissioner Mike Whan is filled with black-and-blue, an appropriate color scheme for a tour that had been taking its lumps over the last couple of years.
The colors are used for the schedule — blue ink for those that are a work in progress, black ink for the done deals.
The board is mostly black these days.
A new LPGA Tour season gets under way this week at Royal Melbourne with the Women's Australian Open, one of four additional tournaments on the 2012 schedule that have helped nudge momentum in a favorable direction.
"It's a blip if we have a nice ramp up and then ball back down," said Whan, who starts his third full year as commissioner. "It took a year to take us from negative momentum to positive momentum, and the next year to turn that positive momentum into success."
He measures success by a 39 percent increase in television viewers in the United States, and by 26 percent overall. While his predecessor, Carolyn Bivens, had a reputation of alienating sponsors with a hardline approach, the LPGA was able to renew eight of the nine tournament contracts that ended in 2011.
It lost one tournament and added five others, including player favorites in Kingsmill, Va., and Toledo, Ohio. The LPGA also renewed 10 of its 11 marketing agreements.
So where was the big swing in momentum?
"If there was one, I missed it," Whan said. "I couldn't tell you that I got on a plane one day and said, `Today we crossed the bridge.' It's like any small business. If you want to turn your business around, it starts with your customers. Everybody we've added either came through or had dialogue with existing customers.
"If we want more customers, it's not because we're focusing on customers we don't have. It's going to be focusing on customers we do have. Because everybody who signs a long-term deal is going to talk to three of our customers."
Even so, behind any business model are the players. Whan is not lacking in that department.
Six months into his job, Lorena Ochoa without warning walked away from golf to concentrate on her new family and burgeoning foundation. Her slot was taken by a veritable star in Yani Tseng, the 23-year-old from Taiwan who last year became the youngest golfer ever to reach five majors.
"I didn't think I'd win a major. Then, I didn't think I'd win a second major. Now it's five," Tseng said. "It's just crazy."
Tseng won seven times on the LPGA Tour last year — 12 titles around the world — and captured the LPGA player of the year for the second straight year.
Stacy Lewis was the lone American to win a major at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, while Cristie Kerr had a peculiar season in which she failed to win on the LPGA Tour but still wound up second on the money list with nine finishes in the top five.
Paula Creamer remains among the most popular LPGA Tour players and hopes to rebound from nagging injury, while the freshest face on tour is Alexis Thompson, who last year at 16 became the youngest winner of an LPGA Tour event.
Still in the mix is Michelle Wie, who has been spending part of her time on tour and part of her time at Stanford, where she is expected to graduate this year before devoting more attention to the LPGA.
"Michelle at 22 ... whatever she's going to be is going to happen in the next seven or eight years," Whan said.
Whan said Tseng is appealing enough through sheer skill to carry the tour, though he doesn't think that will be the case. The LPGA Tour goes all over the world now, and there are home stars on every continent, from Suzann Pettersen in Europe to Ai Miyazato in Japan.
"Yani is rewriting the record book, but the chase pack is interesting," he said. "I think we're almost past a single-player thing, at least on the LPGA. I think we're so much at a stage where there are regional stars."
The LPGA Tour season begins this week at Royal Melbourne, where just three months ago the PGA Tour staged a successful Presidents Cup that showcased one of the world's best courses.
That introduced a new color to the dry-board scheme — gray.
"The commissioner's 'Hail Mary,"' Whan said. "The Australian Open was always gray."
He couldn't simply sanction the event for the LPGA Tour without keeping it in line with prize money at other tournaments in the Asia Pacific region. But he landed a new title sponsor in Handa with a $1.1 million purse.
The tour spends its opening three weeks overseas in Australia, Thailand and Singapore, before starting its domestic portion of the schedule March 15 in Arizona at the LPGA Founders Cup, which a year ago featured a mock purse. Now, the players keep the money.
Along with adding four tournaments, there no longer are large gaps in the schedule, which also hurt whatever momentum it had. The LPGA Tour will not go more than two weeks without playing.
Plus, it has gotten away from another Bivens idea of taking a consistent time slot on Golf Channel, which meant tape delay in the evening. All the North American events will be shown live this year.
One player who won't be around for the first part of the season is 51-year-old Juli Inkster, who decided to have elbow surgery. She has been around for three decades and eight commissioners, and she likes what she sees.
"He's the perfect guy for the job right now," Inkster said. "I think he's built a foundation with the sponsors and tournament owners. And the players are not complaining, which for us is unbelievable."
THIS WEEK IN GOLF
PGA TOUR: PEBBLE BEACH NATIONAL PRO-AM
COURSES: Pebble Beach Golf Links (6,816 yards, par 72), Monterey Peninsula Country Club, Shore Course (6,900 yards, par 72) and Spyglass Hill Golf Club (6,833 yards, par 72).
TELEVISION: Golf Channel (Thursday, 3-7 p.m., 8:30-11:30 p.m.; Friday, 12:30-3:30 a.m., 3-7 p.m., 8:30-11:30 p.m.; Saturday, 12:30-3:30 a.m., 1-2:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.; Sunday, 1-2:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.) and CBS (Saturday, 3-6 p.m.; Sunday, 3-6:30 p.m.).
OH CANADA: Mike Weir makes his 2012 PGA Tour debut, playing for the first time since undergoing elbow surgery last August. Matt McQuillan, who has conditional status on the Tour this year, makes his 2012 debut as well while Graham DeLaet tees it up for the fourth time this year.
NOTES: D.A. Points won his first PGA Tour title and teamed with Bill Murray to win the pro-am competition last year... Tiger Woods is making his first PGA Tour start of the season after opening play two weeks ago with a third-place tie in Abu Dhabi. He won the last of his 71 PGA Tour titles in September 2009. He swept the Pro-Am and U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 2000, winning the Open by a record 15 shots. Woods, playing the event from the first time since 2002, will team with Dallas quarterback Tony Romo. ... Ninth-ranked Dustin Johnson, the 2009 and 2010 winner, is the only player in the top 10 in the world in the field. ... Phil Mickelson is playing for the fourth straight week. He won in 1998, 2005 and 2007. In 2007, he matched the tournament record of 20-under 268 set by Mark O'Meara in 1997. ... Graeme McDowell, the 2010 U.S. Open winner at Pebble Beach, is skipping the tournament.
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LPGA TOUR / ALPG / LET: WOMEN'S AUSTRALIAN OPEN
COURSE: Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Composite Course (6,505 yards, par 73).
TELEVISION: Golf Channel (Thursday-Friday, 12:30-2:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.).
OH CANADA: Lorie Kane, Rebecca Lee-Bentham and Stephanie Sherlock are all in the field for the season opening LPGA event. Kane will be playing her fourth event on the Australian Ladies Tour, missing the cut last week at the Australian Ladies Masters, finishing 44th at the New South Wales Open and ninth at the Royal Canberra Ladies Classic. Lee-Bentham is making her first start since earning her LPGA Tour card last fall while Sherlock got into the event despite having conditional status this year.
NOTES: Yani Tseng successfully defended her title last year, winning by seven strokes at Commonwealth Golf Club. She went on to win 11 worldwide titles, including major victories in the LPGA Championship and Women's British Open in 2011. ...Also in the field are No. 2 Suzann Pettersen, No. 4 Cristie Kerr, No. 7 Jiyai Shin, No. 9 Brittany Lincicome, No. 10 Stacy Lewis, four-time winner Karrie Webb and 16-year-old Lexi Thompson ... No.3 Na Yeon Choi and No. 5 Paula Creamer are among the top ranked players skipping the event. ...Fourteen-year-old New Zealand amateur Lydia Ko is also in the field. She won the New South Wales Open two weeks ago to become the youngest winner of a sanctioned professional tour event. ... Royal Melbourne was the site of the Presidents Cup in November.
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EUROPEAN TOUR: DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC
COURSE: Emirates Golf Club, Majlis Course (7,301 yards, par 72).
TELEVISION: Golf Channel (Thursday-Friday, 4:30-8:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.; Saturday, 4-8 a.m., 3-5 p.m.; Sunday, 4-8 a.m., 3-6:30 p.m.).
NOTES: Spain's Alvaro Quiros won by a stroke last year, making a hole-in-one in a final-round 68. ...Tiger Woods, who is not in this year's field, closed with a 75 to tie for 20th. ...Rory McIlroy, the 2009 winner, joins Quiros, last week's winner Paul Lawrie, John Daly, Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer, Fred Couples, Mark O'Meara, 2010 champion Miguel Angel Jimenez and former Oklahoma State star Peter Uihlein, who got a sponsor's invitation. ...Couples won the 1995 tournament while O'Meara won in 2004. .
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CHAMPIONS TOUR: ALLIANZ CHAMPIONSHIP
COURSE: The Old Course at Broken Sound Club (6,807 yards, par 72).
TELEVISION: Golf Channel (Friday, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 12:30-2:30 a.m., 6:30-9:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1-3 a.m., 7-9:30 p.m.; Monday, 1-3 a.m.).
OH CANADA: Rod Spittle of Niagara Falls, Ont., makes his second Tour start of the year while Jim Rutledge of Victoria, B.C., is making his Tour debut in the first full-field event since securling his card last fall at q-school.
NOTES: Tom Lehman won the first of his three 2011 titles last year, birdieing the final hole for a one-stroke victory over Jeff Sluman and Spittle. ...Fred Funk is making his first start on the 50-and-over tour since July. He had surgery in August to repair a torn ligament in his left thumb and remove scar tissue from his right knee.
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ASIAN TOUR: Philippine Open
COURSE: Wack Wack Golf and Country Club (7,222 yards, par 72)
OH CANADA: Rick Gibson of Victoria, B.C., who last week earned full-time status on the European Senior Tour, is making his first start of the year on the Asian Tour. Ron Harvey Jr., of Sussex, N.B., Lindsay Renolds of Christina Lake, B.C., and Matt Johnston of Winnipeg are also in the field.