Growing pains

The PageNet Tour Championship, featuring the top 30 professionals on the LPGA's money list, begins Thursday at the Desert Inn Golf Club, though you wouldn't know it by walking around the driving range at the D.I. two days before the tournament.

With the exception of a handful of loyal LPGA followers who waited patiently for autographs, there was absolutely no need for crowd control, because the D.I. was practically deserted.

One player, Helen Alfredsson of Sweden, wasn't surprised.

"Unfortunately, it's not a place that's going to draw a lot of people because there's so much else to do here," she said. "The people that come here don't come to watch a golf tournament."

Alfredsson then laughed before adding, "They come here to gamble and watch shows."

Still, with Juli Inkster, Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak around you would think that the practice rounds, which are usually the best chances for fans to interact with players, would have garnered a larger following.

You would also think the fact that the season-ending event that concludes on Sunday at the D.I. will decide the Rolex Player of the Year, the money title and the winner of the coveted Vare Trophy would be enough to lure people away from the casinos to enjoy some fresh air and some high-quality golf.

Well, if history is any indication, the answer is it probably will not.

This year, the only top-30 player missing from the field is Dottie Pepper, who withdrew with a wrist injury and was replaced by Jenny Lidback, 31st on the money list.

Since the tournament has been played at the D.I. in 1996, crowds have been decent but not spectacular, which is surprising considering the field. Like any event, there have been better days than others but overall, LPGA events in Las Vegas have drawn considerably less than PGA Tour events such as the Las Vegas Invitational.

As Alfredsson mentioned, competing with all the vices the city has to offer along with the Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield fight at the Thomas & Mack Center on Saturday isn't easy.

Michael Stearns, tournament director of the PageNet Championship and tournament director at International Management Group, thinks he knows why.

"The people who are here, that come and go, they normally just don't know about the event," he said. "You have something like 4,000 people a month that move in here?

"That's a lot of people to educate that we're here."

The recent boom in popularity of the PGA Tour since Tiger Woods burst upon the golf scene in 1996 has not coincided with a rise in popularity on the LPGA Tour, causing many critics to say that the LPGA Tour is on a downslide and supporters of the LPGA to cry foul.

"I think first of all we do fight against the guys," Alfredsson said. "You know with David Duval and Tiger and (Spain's Sergio) Garcia, those are very big names that have played very well obviously.

"However, there are (also accomplishments) for the women. (Plenty) is accomplished out here, like Juli Inkster's being a mother, winning all the tournaments and winning majors.

"And I think there are things that haven't really come out. I think the LPGA hasn't really pushed it enough. I don't think it's so much the golf. We need to promote the other side of the players."

The constant turnover of sponsors for LPGA-sanctioned events has also given critics fuel.

For 2000, Safeco, Sara Lee and JC Penney have dropped their sponsorship, but three others have already stepped in to replace them. And as long as there are companies willing to step in when others pull out, Stearns says it should be a non-issue, especially since the LPGA Tour has 30 steady corporate sponsors including Rolex, Snackwell's and Izod.

"I believe that the LPGA is scrutinized more than the men," Stearns said.

"I mean, there's been a lot of changeover on the men's tour, but no one's making a big deal about that. The Motorola Western Open, Motorola drops the Western Open sponsorship. Is any one beating them up? The Energizer bunny is no longer the tour championship sponsor and now you have Ingersoll Rand. No one's beating them up about that either."

So what's being done to help promote the women's tour?

In March of 1997, the public-service announcements trumpeting the LPGA with the mantra of "Hey, we can play," debuted during telecasts of various LPGA-sanctioned tournaments.

The PSAs are still shown during tour events, but the problem is, the people watching are probably already fans, so the LPGA is not attracting a new audience.

"I don't think galleries have gone down," said 1998 Rolex Player of the Year and Vare Trophy Award winner Annika Sorenstam. "I don't think it's grown very much to be honest, especially now when everybody talks about golf.

"Golf is in the newspapers and golf is on TV. Everybody knows what golf is now and I don't see women's golf growing the way I would like it to."

Karen Durkin, vice president of marketing for the LPGA Tour, maintains that because the tour is an association, not a consumer-goods company, it should not have to peddle its players.

It's up to the sponsors, she said, to feature them in ads or TV commercials and in the future, the LPGA will step in to help.

"Right now we do not have funding for media buying," she said. "We probably should air commercials, but we are not yet in the position to do that through funding.

"Right now we're working on the creation of a new campaign and we will be working with our telecast partners to try to get them to show the PSAs during different telecasts other than our own tournament. But we don't want to forget our core audience, because they are very important to us.

"In a couple of years, we will chart a path where we have funding to go beyond and attract new audiences."

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