Asian Tigers or Red Herrings?
                          

What does Coca Cola, Walmart, Macdonald's and GE do that the LPGA is not doing? Can the LPGA learn from the big boys and girls?

The answer to the first question is that these corporations have recognized the power and potential of the global economy and have set up shop in China, for example. Asia is not only a source of highly competitive production, it is also a burgeoning marketplace with millions of new white collar consumers coming into the economy each year.

The LPGA has assumed that its market exists solely within the borders of the United States.Despite the fact that it now has tournaments in Korea, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, Singapore, Mexico, China and Japan. Over one third of its schedule now exists outside the United States.

Don't brag about being a world tour, and not-so-privately gripe that the rest of the world is coming to play. The LPGA model is simply too America-centric. The Tour needs to step back and begin to appreciate where the growth opportunities lie.

Let me provide you with a couple of examples. Greg Norman's golf course design company, Great White Shark Enterprises, is bidding on 20 golf course projects in China alone. The reason? The market for new golf course developments in the US has virtually dried up completely. The other reason? China alone is increasing in new players at the rate of 50% a year. It is projected to have 26 million players by 2020. This is more than the current total of players in the USA.

The second example is Annika Sorenstam whose fledgling design company is banking their future, as well, on China and other locales throughout Asia.The future for world economic recovery is projected to be led by the Asian Tigers such as India, China and South Korea. That recovery will jumpstart the moribund US economy, not the other way around (Economist).

Sorenstam and the Shark are but two of a host of other US based entrepreneurs who are banking their company's futures on an offshore recovery.

An important wild card for the growth of the game would be golf's inclusion in a future Olympic Games.This would be a huge boost for the growth of the game worldwide. There would be an immediate investment in new courses, golf tourist travel and international competition not to mention an immediate upsurge in the number of new players, young and old, coming into the sport.

If you are in the business of golf, the smart money will be migrating to the new growth areas of China, India and the rest of Asia. A professional golf business model that doesn't embrace this tsunami of growth will be left behind. In fact, we may soon see the day when US based sponsors are routinely outbid in the LPGA marketplace.

Even now the largest source of TV revenue for the LPGA comes, not from the USA, but from Korea. This trend is likely to continue in all aspects of the Tour's marketplace.

This is why I have maintained that the talk of Korean players on Tour has been, at best, a bogus distraction and, at the very least, a total misapprehension of where the future of womens professional golf resides.

The criticism of the Koreans, in particular, has been petty. Anyone close to the Tour knows that these Asian players are just as committed to the long term health of the womens tour. A group of 47 Korean LPGA members held a news conference in July in Ohio to stress their support for the Tour and their willingness to do whatever is necessary to help.

Players such as Inbee Park have been quick to give back. She donated $50,000 to the LPGA-USGA Girls Golf program following her US Open win. Recently, a contingent of Korean players volunteered at the Ronald Macdonald House in Toledo during the Jamie Farr Tournament and then raised $13,570 for the house the same week. Another group of 9 Korean players volunteered their time to Habitat for Humanity. I don't see too many Wall Street brokers lining up to volunteer to give back to their communities!

The resounding message from the Ohio meeting was that the Korean players "Want the US fans to know them better." Hell these are a bunch of teenagers and twenty somethings thousands of miles from home in a totally strange environment. Surely, the US golfing community can open its arms to welcome them to this great country. Golf, and the people who play and follow it, has been a classy sport. I am confident that the fans will embrace the game's best players irrespective of where they were or will be born. The future of the game truly depends on it. 

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