Two good articles:
First, Hank Gola ia a great friend to golf and our staff. Here’s his new blog.
I’m warning you right now, they might repeat the same mistakes if they don’t reject all of Bivens’s inner circle for a successor. They must clear out not just Bivens, but any and all semblance of a bloodline.
As an aside, in my opinion based on my personal experiences, intellectual property lawyers are not commissioner timber in any league. They belong playing “franchise mode” on their Sony Playstation and leaving the running of the league to hardened, career businessmen.
Additionally, anyone – lawyer, b-school grad, or any other candidate for the position – should not be considered if they speak in arcane, stuck-up business school terms of “branding platforms” and the like. Both Bivens and Finchem have suffered crises of confidence among the ardent, rank-and-file golf fan for not only boorish hard-headedness (FedEx Cup anyone?), but for the cryptic, unintelligible babble that they recite on the air when interviewed by the networks while the tournament is going on.
A recent unscientific poll of 200 ardent golf fans – fans who watch golf weekly-to-monthly and play at least twice a month – a poll showed that:
1) 88% do not buy products based on whether or not they are sponsored by the LPGA or PGA Tours;
2) 75% said that they have an unfavorable opinion of both Finchem and Bivens due to their on-camera persona and business school language. “The fans are the ones watching the broadcast,” lamented one fan, “and yet they talk right past us like we’re not even there.”
On that note, the LPGA needs to have a serious reality check on the aggressiveness and attitude of its representatives and encourage more friendly relations with media, sponsors, and fans. The militant, headstrong, self-aggrandizing way in which the LPGA was run in the Bivens administration has been soundly rejected, and the next head should be humble, grateful, and congenial.
The LPGA is not the powerhouse the Bivens administration kidded themselves into thinking they were, and which they tried to sell as an image. No matter how much people told them that attitude and image were unwise, the Bivens administration lurched headlong and heedless into negotiations of all kinds with bull-in-a-china shop behavior.
It’s time to get new blood in the LPGA, blood that isn’t “image first, substance later,” and which has a solid reality check on how popular they are and how much growth they can expect as a league.
Condeleeza Rice is out there. She could grow the league, and be a great representative for the game. Judy Rankin would be another great choice.
