Golf Lpga

It's golf's offseason, which doesn't really mean much for fans and players alike except there aren't any majors, and the competition dwindles. It also gives media and players a chance to reflect on the bigger picture. Players evaluate their years and see what could be improved, promising to work on that before next year rolls out. Media has the opportunity to hand out awards, evaluate certain tours and find flaws in those tours.

That is where this concept came up, about the LPGA and their struggle to gain identity. You could argue that women's golf is the second most important female sport, behind tennis, but it still seems that women's golf has struggled this decade to resonate with sports fans, even some golf fans. Annika Sorenstam had moments where she became a story bigger than golf, but most of that dealt with a missed cut and a skirt, the latter being more of a Fred Funk prank than anything.

It's not as if Michael Whan does not know what he's getting into.

Before being introduced Wednesday as the new LPGA commissioner, Whan, 44, served as North American vice-president/general manager of TaylorMade Golf. According to the LPGA's announcement, his business unit represented more than 70 percent of the company's worldwide sales and profit.

And prior to working at TaylorMade Whan spent time with Wilson Sporting Goods managing all aspects of the company's golf ball and glove business. He even brings experience heading Wilson's marketing department, two manufacturing facilities and the Research & Development division.

So what's a smart guy like Whan doing getting himself into a mess like this?

NEW YORK (AP) -- The LPGA Tour has picked Michael Whan to be its new commissioner, turning to a former marketing executive in golf and hockey equipment to rebuild the tour's relationships with sponsors.

Whan previously worked for TaylorMade and Wilson golf companies and most recently was president of Mission-Itech Hockey.

"I was that crazy high school kid cutting greens at 5:30 in the morning so he could play free golf in the afternoon and caddying on Sundays," Whan said Wednesday, during an introductory news conference at Madison Square Garden.

As the LPGA seeks to hire a new commissioner and deal with a shrinking schedule caused by economic and management woes, golf great Annika Sorenstam says global growth is key to the tour's survival, even if it means a lower profile in the United States.

"I'm all in favor of a more global expansion of the tour because that's where the demand is today," Sorenstam told FanHouse Wednesday afternoon. "I'm all about trying to grow our tour and create awareness around the world and get new fans.

"That's what I'm trying to push. Hey, let's just grow globally. That way we are going to raise the profile of the players, the product and what we have to offer."

Imagine for a minute Tiger Woods going over five months without winning a PGA Tour event. The world, as golf journalist know it, would stop. We'd be calling for his head, his swing and his spikes. It would be Armageddon, birdie edition.

Well, that was the current situation in the LPGA. Lorena Ochoa, the best female golfer in the world, won her last event in April, at the Corona Championship, and was looking like she might not win again in 2009 until Sunday at the Navistar Classic.

Tied for the lead after two rounds, Ochoa turned her game to red, shooting eight under on the weekend to claim her third victory of the year. Her final 18-under tally was four clear of the second place finishers, Michelle Wie and Brittany Lang, and well ahead of the early story, 14-year-old Alexis Thompson.

It would have been fun.

It would have been fun to see a girl two years shy of earning a driver's license make a run at a professional golf tournament, becoming the youngest player to ever win an LPGA event. That is what Alexis Thompson was trying to do after a first round 65 was followed up with a 3-under 69 on Friday, giving her a share of the lead in the LPGA Navistar Classic. It would have been fun, but this is why 14-year-olds don't normally win professional sporting events.

Thompson, competing in just her fifth LPGA tournament as an amateur, was trying to become the first non-professional to win on the LPGA tour since 1969, when JoAnne Carner took home the Burdine's Invitational. So needless to say, seeing a girl with an asterisk on the top of a leaderboard is pretty rare. On Saturday, Thompson struggled to a 2-over 74, leaving her eight shots back of who else, Lorena Ochoa with 18 holes to play.

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Alexis Thompson's Web site proudly proclaims her as "golf's next big star," and if she keeps up the play she's brought to the first two rounds of the LPGA Navistar Classic, it might just be true.

After a first round 65 that had her a shot back of the leader, the 14-year-old Thompson joined an elite group at 10-under after her second straight sub-70 round, firing a 3-under 69 in her fifth career LPGA tournament. Before Thursday, Thompson had never broke 71, but the amateur continues to play well.

That is the good news. The bad news for Thompson fans is the group she is a part of. Lorena Ochoa and Laura Davies both are in the group of five at 10-under, along with Yani Tseng and Giulia Sergas.

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Update: Janice Moodie, a LPGA veteran, birdied six of her last seven holes on Thursday to take the lead over Thompson by one shot.

Most 14-year-olds are focused on one thing and one thing only ... getting ready for the leap into the nasty world of freshman year of high school. Alexis Thompson is currently worried how she's going to follow up a first round 65 in the LPGA Navistar Classic.

A week after a 13-year-old made a hole-in-one in her first ever trip to the LPGA, Thompson made eight birdies on the Robert Trent Jones design in Prattville, Al., leading a shot over Michelle Wie (remember when she was the young one?) and two shots clear of a big group at 5-under.

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Last weekend, the PGA Tour concluded with some much-needed FedEx Cup drama. For two years, the PGA Tour's playoff system had failed, basically crowning the winner before the final event had even concluded. Now, for the first time since the PGA Tour went FedEx, we had putts on a Sunday that were for more than just the tournament at hand -- they were for a prize most guys on tour couldn't totally grasp.

So what is the next logical move? The LPGA getting its own FedEx Cup, or so Dottie Pepper thinks. On Tuesday, Pepper wrote on Golf.com that she thinks the LPGA could benefit from a FedEx Cup-style postseason, pointing out the extra exposure for sponsors and such. The problem with Pepper's plan is simple -- the LPGA can't get sponsors right now ... for anything. Why focus on adding something new to the schedule when all the regulars that have been around for years and years are dropping out like bar patrons at 1:58 in the morning.

Here is Pepper's plan.

Casie Cathrea is 13, meaning she's so young, Taylor Swift won't even sing about the travails of her adolescence, but it does mean that if you've got the golf game, you can play in a professional golf event, and maybe make the swing of your life.

Cathrea, a 13-year-old freshman did one of the hardest feats in sports unknown to most fans -- she Monday qualified for a professional golf tournament, the LPGA Challenge, and in her first LPGA round, made a hole-in-one.

Casie aced the par-3 12th hole on her way to posting a 2-over 74, not bad for a kid in her first year as a teenager.