By GolfDigestME.com

LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan told The Times that she would “take the call” if LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman ever wanted to talk to her about the LPGA.

“It’s my responsibility to evaluate every opportunity,” Marcoux Samaan said in the report. “I would engage in a conversation if it would achieve our aim of promoting women’s golf but there needs to be input from players and sponsors. There’s a lot of factors to consider before we do business with LIV Golf.”

Marcoux Samaan is clearly aware of the angst among LIV Golf and the PGA Tour in the men’s game and wants to avoid any situation like that if possible. The women already have six Ladies European Tour events sponsored by Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Company, and three top players from Europe are sponsored by Golf Saudi.

The piece ended with Marcoux Samaan saying that she “remains bullish about the future” and that “working together is always better than a fractured organization”.

Charles Barkley. Christian Petersen

Meanwhile, NBA legend-turned-broadcaster Charles Barkley met with LIV Golf CEO Norman amid rumours that he is considering a broadcast position with the circuit.

According to the New York Post, the NBA Hall of Famer — who has dabbled in golf broadcasting with TNT’s ‘The Match’ exhibitions — confirmed that he will be at next week’s LIV Golf event at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he will be participating in the pro-am.

Earlier this month Barkley joined golf personalities Drew Stoltz and Gary McCord on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio to discuss a potential move to the golf organisation, saying he would be “foolish” not to take a meeting given the outlandish money potentially on the table. However Barkley said the jump could cost him his job on TNT’s popular “Inside the NBA” show.

“I have no idea how TNT is going to respond,” Barkley said. “I don’t even know if they’ll let me do it. I might have to resign from TNT.”

“Some type of broadcasting would be fun. But if I’m gonna have to lose TNT and lose my sponsors, it will have to be something crazy numbers-wise. I’m taking this meeting, I got no idea what Greg’s gonna say to me, but if I’m going to lose TNT and my commercials, it will have to be a ridiculous number for me to move on.”

According to the New York Post, Barkley is currently in a three-year, $30 million deal with Turner Sports.

The development comes days after LIV Golf signed David Feherty to its broadcast team.

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What was the best piece of advice you received when you started the job?

The best advice I got was from Mike Whan. He was very generous with his time prior to me taking the job. His advice was twofold: One, the tournaments are the most important thing. Focus as much as you can on making sure we have the right opportunities for our players with the right partners. That seems obvious, but sometimes you can get caught up in parts of this complex ecosystem. Have a relentless pursuit of the best tournament opportunities for our players. I thought that really grounds you on, this is ultimately what we’re trying to do. And secondly, which would have been an instinct of mine because it’s really what I love to do, get to know the players. Get to know them, engage with them and hear their stories. Those two things were most important. They probably would have been a bit instinctual, but to have him drill down to the two most important things, I think he was spot on.

When you’re talking to players, what sort of things do you talk about?

They’ll tell you exactly what we should do. This is their world. They own the tour. They live it every day, they’re really smart, and they’re thoughtful, and they’re entrepreneurs. I have really appreciated their feedback. It’s always been with the best interest of the tour, they all come at it from that position, which is really incredible. They talk about their experience. We focus on what environment will help them achieve their goals and reach their peak. From big and small things, like the locations of events, the environment once we’re at the tournament. Performance things, like nutrition and hydration, fitness trailers … all of the things on the administrative side that make their lives easier, so then they can focus on reaching their own peak performance. They also have great marketing ideas, great content ideas. They’re independent entrepreneurs who are concerned about their own success, but mostly they come at it like, Hey, this is what we need to do to make our tour as good as it can possibly be.

Do you feel like you’re close to an ideal schedule, or are there changes you’d like to make?

The 2022 schedule we just released is excellent, thanks to the amazing partners we have, new and old. We’re in a great space. But to Mike’s original piece of advice, that’s something you have to constantly work on. We’re still evaluating it, but we’re grateful for the partners we have and how they’ve stepped up. The purses obviously are significantly higher than they were in 2021 [overall prize money jumped from $76.4 million to $85.7 million, with the winner of the CME Group Tour Championship set to earn $2 million]. We have a great number of events [34], and the flow is pretty decent. And I think we’ll see additional increases in purses in the coming months.

What has surprised you most about the job?

Despite the fact that this is an individual sport, it feels more like a college athletic program where you have individual teams, but you’re all working towards the same athletic department, same university goal. It feels similar. The golfers are all individual “teams” but they’re all thinking about the whole, and they’re passionate about that. At Princeton, we used to call it “the team around the team.” There is a team around our players. From our partners to our staff, to our board members, to media partners. Everybody has this love of the LPGA. That’s something I felt during the interview process and just being a fan of the LPGA, but when you get in it, it’s kind of shocking. I think people really do love what they do. They focus on what’s the greater good in all of it.

Could you pinpoint a greatest moment from this season?

There’s been a ton of great moments. I’ve worked my entire life in sports and been an athlete my whole life. I love those moments where sports is a community endeavour, where people come together and cheer hard for a common good. Being on the first tee at the Solheim Cup and seeing all the energy around women’s golf and seeing the excitement for our players, was a highlight for sure. That was remarkable. Hearing a crowd cheer like that at a golf event and having the women hit through the noise, it was so intense and so loud. That was really cool.

‘We want to offer a schedule where the top 150 players in the world can earn a living that’s commensurate with their talent.’
—Mollie Marcoux Samaan

Where are the tour’s biggest opportunities for growth?

In the areas of technology and data, we have a huge opportunity, and that will help us tell our story more aggressively and get a wider fan base. We have a very solid and strong fanbase, but a lot of people don’t yet know about our players and how talented they are and how amazing they are off the golf course. Personalizing and getting the world to know our athletes is a big goal, and a very achievable goal.

We have amazing partners, but I think there are so many more out there who we can help reach their goals. There is a lot of opportunity for growth in our partnership area, keeping our current partners and continuing to customize programs for them, satisfy their goals, while also gaining more partners.

The other opportunity we have is that we’re this ecosystem, with LPGA USGA Girls Golf, our amateur women’s program and LPGA professionals. One of our goals is to further integrate all areas of the organization to get maximum benefit and growth. That includes investing in our diversity and inclusion work, expanding opportunities to grow the game for a wider group of young girls and women who maybe have not been exposed to the game or don’t necessarily have the financial means to play. That’s a huge goal because I feel like sports is the great equalizer. It that has so many ancillary benefits, it’s our responsibility to think about growing those opportunities for a much wider group of people.

Michael Reaves
Getting to know Jin Young Ko and other players on tour was an early priority for Marcoux Samaan upon taking over as LPGA commissioner.

How important is getting more network TV time for the tour?

It’s always important, and I think the women deserve to be on network television. We’re doing pretty well for a women’s sports property, but it’s just not enough and it’s so significantly less than the men’s sports. Continuing to focus on that is a goal of ours. We have a great partner in NBC Sports and Golf Channel; they are part of that “team around the team” that we talked about. We obviously want as much exposure as we can get there. But we also want to be creative and see what other options are out there to supplement that, whether it’s streaming or other content delivery opportunities, particularly with the younger audience. I have three kids, and they’re attached to streams and networks and channels online and digitally. How we capitalize on that and continue to build a younger fan base is really important.

This past season had a couple events shown on tape delay. What can you do to avoid that in the future?

Obviously, sports is not great when it’s tape delayed. People love watching our women play, whether it’s tape delayed or not, but our goal would obviously be to have as much live television as possible. A very small percentage of our broadcasts were tape delayed. I think people tend to focus on that more than what is the reality of what was tape delayed. Obviously, we’d like to have as much live television as possible. But broadcast television is a finite resource, and there’s a lot of competing interests for that. We have to continue to show our value and how meaningful and interested people are in our product.

When you’re talking to partners, what do they love about the tour?

They really see the value from an exposure standpoint, a branding and commercialization standpoint, but also they generally love the association with our brand and they love the similarity in values and the way they can express to their employees and customers about what they really care about. They talk about that, and the accessibility of our players, the authenticity of our players, the talent of our players and the flexibility of the LPGA in helping them reach their individual goals. Those things are very positive. You get great exposure, but you also get to talk about your vision and values through the tour.

What sort of things do they say holds the tour back?

We’d like to be on network television more, we’d like more eyeballs on what we’re doing. That’s the biggest thing we hear. But largely, people feel they have a true partner in us, that we can customize our product to the needs of our partners, which is a really fun place to be in.

Do you think the LPGA and the PGA Tour should collaborate more? Do you talk with you Jay Monahan a lot?

Jay and the PGA have been terrific partners to me as I’ve started this job. Jay has been quite aggressive in offering support and advice and help. I’ve been really grateful for that. He’s made his team accessible to us as well. We’re just beginning to build on all of that. There’s lots of room for growth and opportunity there.

Going forward, what are your big picture goals for the tour?

We want to continue to see the pay equity gap shrink. We want to offer a schedule where the top 150 players in the world can earn a living that’s commensurate with their talent. We do really well at the top. We need to continue to think about if you’re the 100th best player in the world, that’s a pretty amazing talent, what does that look like? We want to continue to reduce the gap between the LPGA and the PGA Tour at every level—the top, the middle, the bottom—with the ultimate goal of pay equity. We want to continue to focus on an environment where the players can reach peak performance, build a sustainable life and play as long as they are competitive and as long as they want to play. I see us as the model for women’s professional sports. We’ve been around for 71 years, we’ve had an enormous amount of success and there’s so much more growth to be had.

The post Mollie Marcoux Samaan’s plans for the LPGA: ‘Getting the world to know our athletes is a big goal, and very achievable’ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dave Shedloski
As a youngster the golf course was her summer “babysitter.” As a teenager, she competed in the state amateur in New York against Dottie Pepper, and she consumed women’s golf on television whenever she could find it. Though she played the game in high school—she opted for soccer and ice hockey at the collegiate level at Princeton University—though she devoted her senior thesis to the history of women’s golf. More recently, she has won her club championship five times.

Don’t let her current title, athletic director at her alma mater, Princeton, mislead. Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the new LPGA commissioner, easily possesses a more thorough and impressive golf pedigree than any of the eight individuals who preceded her.

A love for the game isn’t all the wife and mother of three children brings to the role. She is competitive, and she has leadership experience, and she knows how to deal with corporate sponsors. She also can connect with athletes because she was one herself. But it is her lifelong devotion to golf that makes Marcoux Samaan a compelling choice to succeed Mike Whan in leading the top women’s golf organization in the world.

“My life would absolutely … I’d never be sitting here if I didn’t have some success in sports and developed a confidence in my own abilities to perform under pressure and to handle really difficult situations,” Marcoux Samaan said during a Zoom meeting with the media Tuesday afternoon. “I credit everything to my role in sports, but I think golf, too, even though I didn’t play golf at a really high level … but I think that experience from a career perspective, you know, being able to be competent and go out and play with anyone and become competent in playing with anyone has helped me in my career every step of the way.”

Marcoux Samaan, a five-time club champion at North Fork C.C. in Cutchogue, N.Y., where she carries a 7.4 handicap index, got started in the game the way a lot of youngsters might—by following an older sibling, in this case, her brother. Her parents didn’t play, but when he began going to the local course in Ithaca, N.Y., with friends, Marcoux Samaan, then 12 years old, wanted to tag along. “I was hooked from that moment.”

Her negotiating skills proved formidable even then. She talked her parents into paying the $45 junior membership fee for the summer at Newman Golf Course, “the best babysitter they could ever imagine,” she said. They would drop her off at 8 in the morning, and she might play up to 36 holes in a day. At 14, she nearly won the women’s city championship, losing in a playoff.

While the self-described “sports nut” was a four-time All-Ivy League selection in ice hockey, when it came time to write her senior thesis, golf beckoned her yet again. Her paper was titled, “The Social Construction of Sport and Gender: A History of Women’s Golf from 1895 to 1955.”

“The advice that I got was write on something that you’re passionate about, write on something that you care about because it’s such a big project; it’s a hundred and some pages and you spend your whole senior year writing it,” said the history major, who graduated cum laude in 1991. “So you might as well do it on something that you care about. And of course, the thing I care about most is sports. And golf has served a very critical social role for women for many, many years.

“So I came upon this idea of writing the history of women in golf. So, it was sort of mostly a history of women in society, but I use golf as an example of how women were living in society in the various eras.”

Interestingly, Marcoux Samaan reread that thesis when she was preparing for her first interview with the LPGA. But, of course, it’s this current era that she will help shape. In addition to her golf and sports background, Marcoux Samaan brings fundraising experience from her seven years as Princeton’s athletic director and corporate leadership experience during 19 years at Chelsea Piers Management, the company that owns and operates two world-class amateur sports complexes, Chelsea Piers New York and Chelsea Piers Connecticut.

Upon hearing of Marcoux Samaan’s resume, LPGA veteran Angela Stanford offered this hot take: “I’m not sure how to properly phrase this, but she sounds like a badass.”

Denise Applewhite, Princeton

Marcoux Samaan inherits from Whan an organisation on sound footing but with potential “for tremendous growth,” she said. And her abilities to tap into that potential made her the unanimous choice of the LPGA search committee.

“One of the things that impressed me the most about Molly was her ability to build relationships with a wide variety of different stakeholders at Princeton, whether it was the university officials, the big donors, the alumni, the coaches, the athletes,” said Diane Gulyas, Chair of the LPGA Board of Directors and the search committee. “When I think about our universe of stakeholders, I honestly think she’s going to be awesome with our sponsors. And I think that will lead to even better relationships growing relationships with our sponsors. That of course always leads to more opportunities and bigger purses for our players. Um, I think she’s really going to help us as we think about how to increase our fan engagement in new and creative ways, bringing in new technology, different ways of thinking about fan engagement.”

“From her first interview, I could just see that she is down to earth authentic, someone that cared deeply for her athletes at school,” said World Golf Hall of Famer Juli Inkster. “I think she’s going to be a great players’ commissioner. She’s gritty, she’s smart, but she keeps it simple. Her vision for where the LPGA wants, wants to go. I think she’s the perfect person to take us there. I know it’s probably not the greatest term, but she’s a jock, and she loves sports and she’s been in a man’s world … knows how to collaborate and bring the LPGA forward.”

“I just think at this moment,” Marcoux Samaan said, “what could be better than sponsoring the LPGA and, sort of, how we’re all working towards providing the most diverse and inclusive environments within our companies and to, to be able to use the LPGA as a platform and a commitment to that equity, I think is a huge opportunity.”

And the opportunity to be at the helm of the LPGA at this moment, Marcoux Samaan said, is bigger than just a job growing purse size or maximizing exposure for golf’s best female players. “This is a remarkable opportunity and a remarkable responsibility to get up every day and be able to try to change the world through golf,” she said.

“I’ve always believed that sports have the power to change the world,” she added. “And I think in this moment in time with, you know, just such tremendous positive energy around women’s sports, around women’s leadership, around sort of society’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. I think that we at the LPGA have just this unique platform to change lives for the better.”

See, it comes back to golf. For Marcoux Samaan, it always comes back to the golf.

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