After super year, LPGA faces challenges in 2025

It’s been a banner year for women’s sports, especially women’s golf. Caitlin Clark had both women’s basketball (Indiana Fever in WNBA) and playing a pro-am 9 holes in The Annika LPGA tournament a month ago, following up with a Wednesday pro-am at the PGA Tour RSM Classic in Sea Island, Georgia.

Then there was LPGA star Lydia Ko winning an Olympic gold medal in golf representing her adopted sport country of New Zealand. Of course, there was the phenomenal year-long performance put in by Nelly Korda, winning 7 LPGA tournaments, including five in a row.

The final LPGA tournament of the year, the Race for the CME Globe and the biggest payout, was won in storybook fashion by Jeeno Thitikul, who went eagle, birdie on her last two holes. She won $4 million for first place and another $1 million for winning the Aon Risk Reward Challenge earlier in the week. That $5 million was more than Nelly Korda won in her 7 wins combined.  

But the LPGA tour isn’t satisfied with the biggest prize payout in women’s golf history. They want to be on a par with what the PGA Tour men play for. That will be a stretch because (1) few sugar-daddies like CME Group are available, and (2) prime TV rights and deep pocket advertisers are not on the horizon. Still, as Frank would say, “It was a very good year.”

For 2025, the LPGA is facing a couple of significant challenges. The first is the issue of transgender women seeking to play in LPGA tournaments. The current controversy arose when transgender golfer Hailey Davidson, who, as a male, played for two different American men’s college golf teams, entered and planned to play in the LPGA tour qualifying tournament. Three days before the pre-qualifying stage of “Q-school,” a letter from the Independent Women’s Forum, which was signed by 275 female playing members of the LPGA, was sent to the LPGA, the USGA and the International Golf Federation, urging that biological men that became transgender women be prohibited from competing in professional women’s golf. 

Since 2010, the LPGA policy has allowed players who have undergone gender-affirming surgery after puberty and meet hormone therapy requirements to compete. The aforementioned letter, as reported in multiple media outlets, stated: “The male advantage in driving the ball is estimated around 30 percent performance advantage; this is an enormous difference in the context of sport. Anatomical differences between males and females affect clubhead speed and regulating consistency at ball contact. We all know there can be no equal athletic opportunity for women without a separate female category. It is essential for the integrity and fairness of women’s golf to have a clear and consistent participation policy in place based on a player’s immutable sex.” This is a controversy that probably will not be resolved before the 2025 season begins, and could ultimately be settled in the courts.

The second problem for the LPGA tour is the glacier pace of slow play, which is so severe it has affected players’ attitudes and TV exposure.  There are some in the media who note that watching LPGA golf is like watching paint dry. Six hour rounds are not unusual.

LPGA veteran and star Charley Hull has publicly offered her “ruthless” slow-play solution: “If you get three bad timings, it’s a tee shot penalty. If you have three, you lose your tour card.” It may not come to that, but there is no question that the LPGA tour has to come to grips with slow play.  LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan recently expressed interest in speeding up play and suggested forming a pace-of-play committee.  Sounds like our government at work.