One month before its season begins, the USLPGA Tour announced a 28-tournament schedule that includes five majors, three additional tournaments and prize money closing in on US$50 million.
Tour commissioner Mike Whan delivered a balanced schedule on Tuesday that circles the globe. It starts next month in Australia. More than half the tournaments are in North America. The Asian swing late in the year includes a new tournament in China, and the season ends in November with the Titleholders and US$700,000 to the winner, the biggest payoff in women’s golf.
Whan also announced that CME, the title sponsor of the season-ending Titleholders, has extended its deal through 2016.
“Our tournaments are about customers a lot more than they are about the players and television,” Whan said. “If you do the right thing with the customer, you’ll end up being with the customer a long time.”
Two years ago, the tour had only 23 tournaments.
Whan is close to what he considers an ideal schedule of no more than 32 tournaments — enough to give his players ample starts and still small enough that the tournaments can expect to get a majority of the best players.
The USLPGA Tour previously announced a new tournament in the Bahamas on May 23 to May 26 and a return to Texas, its first official event in the Lone Star State since the US Women’s Open at Colonial in 1991.
The North Texas Shootout is to be held from April 25 to April 28, three weeks before the USPGA Tour arrives in town for its Texas swing.
The third new tournament is in China — the Reignwood Pine Valley LPGA Classic in the first week in October, which launches an Asian swing that is to take players to Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
“The performance, approachability and growing popularity of our players is the No. 1 factor in the LPGA’s continued momentum, which has led to expanding coverage on Golf Channel, the growing slate of playing opportunities and our ever-increasing fan base,” Whan said.
The Evian will become the fifth major, held from Sept. 12 to Sept. 15 in France with a US$3.25 million purse.
That will be the last of a strong lineup of majors that includes the US Women’s Open going to Seabonack on Long Island and the Women’s British Open returning to the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier