No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1133: LPGA Commissioner Craig Kessler

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Soly and Cody visit with LPGA Commissioner Craig Kessler for a check-in on his first eight months in charge. We discuss the controversy at the season opening Tournament of Champions, some key staff additions, establishing relationships with some of the biggest stars on tour and key sponsors, scheduling and venue priorities and a ton more. Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nolayingup.com/esf⁠ Support our Sponsors: Titleist Rhoback Lagoon If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here spent some time out in Dallas last week

with the LPGA tour commissioner Craig Kessler. Cody and I went out there. It's a home game for Cody, but met up at Trinity Forest. And in-person interview, sit down, full hour here with the new commissioner of the LPFSA. PGA tour talking about his agenda. We revisit what happened at Hilton talking about schedules,

marketing, and all the changes that are coming to the LPGA tour. Greatly appreciate Craig's time. I greatly appreciate everyone tuning in as well. Do you want to let you know before we get going, Titleist has officially brought back their loyalty rewarded promotion where you can buy three dozen ProV1, ProV1X, or ProV1X, or AVX golf balls, and get a fourth dozen for free. This is wild supplies last.

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All right. Here's what I want to know first. Like the literal actual day one of the job. What do you do? Like is there like a blueprint on your desk of like, here's how to be the LPGA tour commissioner? Like what does day one on the job actually look like? It was a great day. Got on an airplane, flew to Orlando, Florida,

drove to Daytona Beach and walked into what was just an unbelievable atmosphere. Place was decorated. The staff were there. I think we had a food truck for lunch. And honestly, day one was entirely dedicated to the team. team walking the halls and getting to know the staff. Do you feel like you knew what to do, like I'm honestly, we'll get into the actual LPGA tour stuff, but I'm just so curious about this job in general.

Did you feel like you knew what to do on day one or like was there a big learning curve? You know, I'm sure there is a learning curve of course, but take us to like where, you know, when you're when your playing gets like actually get puts into place. There's no paint by number approach here. No, uh, no formulaic playbook that was laid out. And frankly, I'm still on that learning curve. I had ideas and thoughts. I'll give you a few examples. Again, getting to know the staff, reaching out to our partners, being super visible with our players, walking the driving range as often as possible in those first few weeks and months. But candidly, the plan came together as we were flying the airplane.

How does, you know, in what direction does this go more where, you know, you interview for the job, yet there's also a recruiting of you for the job in terms of were you able to diction? Tate, you know, hey, if I'm going to take the job, here's how I want to do it, here's how we're going to do it. Like, I need to have the runway to do this or, you know, were you hired to execute a certain plan? Does that question make sense? Like, where does it, you know, where does the, where does the ball get passed there? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Look, I think the best interview processes are like dating more than anything else where each side kind of has to feel the other side out and hopefully both sides all in love by the end. There was never a point where the interview committee said, this is what you're. being hired to do. And there was never a point where I said, this is exactly what I'm going to do. I think what we did is we asked a ton of questions of each other. We talked about past experiences,

ideas, hopes, dreams. And by the end, it felt like each side had confidence in the other. And here we are nine months later. What nine months in kind of where, uh, how would you say the plan is going? If you were to pictured where you'd like to be nine months from your start date, how would you say you're doing and what you've wanted to execute and how what you've been able to put into action. Yeah, I think it's a tale of two cities. On the one hand, I'm incredibly proud. I mean, I think our team collectively. And when I say team, it's our staff. It's the players and what they've done. It's our partners and how they've leaned in. I think we're ahead of where I expected we would be nine months in this coming season, every round live on the broadcast in the U.S. for the first time in

75 years. And the quality of what fans will see will be amazing. Those are fast changes. Some things happened quickly. It was impressive. Totally. And it took a village to make it happen. You look at some of the people we've recruited to our team, who I'm sure we'll talk about. Chad Coleman is CMO and Casey Daniel is chief administrative officer, Monica Fee, leading sales. So we're ahead in one sense. On the flip side, I have this expression that comes to mind from time to time, which is the paranoid inherit the earth. I wake up almost every night at two o'clock in the morning, staring at the ceiling, wondering like what's next and how do we go faster?

What is next then? Well, for now, it's execution. It's all the things that we've talked about over the last few weeks and months related to the broadcast, storytelling, creating global superstars. We've got work to do

to actually bring those things to life. So we're laser focused there over the next couple of weeks and months. And then I think what fans should expect after that is some serious work on optimizing our schedule. We talk about routing courses and purses, and while we're great in some areas, we've got work left to do in others.

What would you, you know, if you're talking about the schedule, improving the schedule, rerouting the schedule, what would a more ideal schedule look like? And what are some of the headwinds you face in pushing that through? Yeah. So I'll give you a few examples of the themes we're going to unpack as we get into optimizing our schedule. One is setting it up logically so that we build drama throughout the season. I find it tough at times that we send our players to Asia twice. Just before the Tour Championship and before the Annika, there in Asia, they come back. and two weeks later, the season's over. That doesn't exactly build to a precipice and, frankly,

fans want more drama. The second thing our fans have told us loud and clear is they want to see us play some of the best courses in the world, whether it's courses that the men can't play because they're too short for the men or some of the courses that the men do play that we should also go to. That's another theme that we're going to be focused on. And frankly, I don't see a huge set of bottlenecks other than in some places we're locked into some long-term contracts. But, you know, everything's worth the conversation. Yeah, I think that's music to my ears there, Craig. I think yearly kind of the joke on social media is once the LPGA tour announces their schedule,

everybody likes to put the quick social, you know, Google Earth flyover thing. That's right. Just how much these women are traveling. And when you set out about that process of identifying, you know, two Asian swings, things like that, what other things that you identified along the way that you're like, this historically is why I understand why they do. did it this way, but this no longer makes sense. Yeah, I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the leaders that came before me.

I realized at the time, you know, a handful of years ago, we had 15, 17, 18 tournaments. Today we have 32 tournaments playing for $134 million in prize money. Today, the schedule in some respects is a function of the LPGA taking what it was able to get at the time. I feel incredibly lucky to be leading this organization at a time with crazy momentum. And the number of reachouts we've had from courses and sponsors who've raised their hands to help, maybe at an all-time high. And so we're going to take advantage of that. And to your question, Cody, about, you know, like, what are the factors we consider?

Building drama, routing is certainly one of them. Can we play an elevated course that fans are going to tune in to see? We spend a lot of time thinking about media rights and our media partners. We just signed two deals in Asia, one in Korea, one in Japan. The deal in Japan is the biggest streaming deal. in the history of the LPGA tour. Like, we want to go to Japan. We want to play in front of those fans locally.

Yeah, that's a great thing, specifically highlighting, you know, Korea, and this isn't a you problem at all, but you kind of inherited a broadcast, a media rights issue in Korea that kind of had trickle-down effects to a stateside tournament that was honoring Ceri Pock and everything like that.

It was great to button those things up and make sure that your stars, the biggest stars that are Korean that are playing on the LPGGG, tour still are being streamed and have an active part, let alone the business side of it. But as you look at protecting and opening up things like that, are we going to see a sery event that is strong and maybe more Korean companies push behind it here in Dallas? Forever we had an LPGA tour event here.

This is one of the biggest Korean-American communities that we have in the United States. The majority of the Koreans that play on the LPGA tour are based in Dallas. Is that something that we're going to see back on the schedule? Your observations are totally right and we're in the midst of working on the solutions. We've said very publicly that we're going to go to where the opportunity is. And I'll tell you, I took my first trip with the LPGA to Korea a couple of months ago for the international crown. It was off the charts. Did you join a fan club?

I'm in Sun Gun Parks fan club, actually. I should. Yeah. It's fun. I got to be careful playing favorites, but yeah, it was incredible. It was incredible. And I'll tell you, too, not just the on-course experience, but off-course, I went to the, I think it was the Hyundai Mall and went up to the third or fourth floor. And half of the floor is dedicated to women's golf at leisure apparel.

Like, there's massive opportunity in Asia and it's on us to figure out how and when to go capture. The only place where Fujoy, PXG truly is streetwear. And you're like, what is a massive billboards, Nelly, Danielle King, you name it. Like, it's just, it's crazy. how much that country embraces their women's call. Still, I remember that trip so vividly of just like people just, you know, Sung-on Park getting swarmed. This was past her prime, even swarmed after a round of all these people that had traveled

from far and wide to get a picture with her and everything. Well, I think that, you know, we're dancing around. You started your, the first speeches that you kind of made. You came out. You said, hey, I have four pillars, things that I'm going to continuously look at. Every decision that comes to me, I'm going to rack against. And part of that was not just growing and building your fan base, but like truly creating fans that have favorites that are extremely outwardly supportive of that.

I think that is a small example of what you're looking for everywhere, if I'm not mistaken. You nailed it. So the four pillars you're referencing, trust, fans, visibility, and financials. To talk about those middle two pillars, fans and visibility, there is a difference between somebody watching a sport and somebody like feeling it in their bones right i remember when rory won the masters last year everyone in our home was in tears right i mean just you like you've we felt it in our bones and part of the reason was we've seen videos of rory as a little kid hitting golf balls into his parents washing machine dry or whatever it was and we know the story about the

sacrifices parents made working multiple jobs to get rory to the the apex of of the game right when i was in last week and I watched Gino went in front of her home crowd. There's 8,000 fans around the green and she stays 45 minutes after signing autographs and her moms in tears and you could feel it in your bones. We have a duty to our athletes and frankly to our fans to create those moments where people feel it. I hear a lot of we say this out loud. A lot of people say this out loud. Like we tell stories, tell stories. We need to develop the storytelling. What does that actually look like in your mind because it's there's challenges in telling stories in the middle of a golf broadcast when you have commercial breaks and you're trying to show as many golf shots as possible

and i feel like it's something i hear in golf both on the men's and women side all the time and i i i feel like everybody says that we got to all right well now i'm in charge we're going to tell stories and i don't i don't feel like we ever see the actual change in what that actually looks like in your mind what does that mean when you talk about wanting to tell players stories well let's start by acknowledging it takes a world-class team to do it enter Chad Coleman, former CMO, Dude Perfect. And I was at Calloway before that. We've got guys like J.D. Sturb on our team who lead communications.

We've got world-class talent that's going to help us do it. The second thing I'd say is that storytelling historically for the LPGA has felt to me like it was purely inside the ropes. And that's great. It's a great start. And we're going to do more there. Having Trackman at all of our events this year with four times the number of shots traced, will give us access to data that allow us to tell some super interesting. interesting stories. The real storytelling that I'm excited about those going to happen outside the

rooms. Think about what happens in culture now. People know what NFL players wear on their way into and out of the stadium. They know where Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are going on vacation. We've done none of that, or at least very little of that at the LPGA. But you look at what some of our athletes have done recently, Nellie going to the Met Gala or Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition or Charlie Hall going to a state dinner in the UK. You look at our players at the Rolex Awards this year, dressed to the nines. Like there are some interesting things happening

that are more culture-oriented outside the ropes. And those are the stories we know our fans care about. Talk to me a little bit about one of the biggest changes you made almost immediately into your tenure was moving the location of the first major championship on the LPJ Tourg Island. Moving the Chevron Championship from Carlton Woods, where we've seen it the last couple of years to Memorial Park in Houston. What's the motivation behind that?

And what are you expecting to gain? What will LPJ tour gain from that? Yeah, I'll tell you a quick story. And then I'll bring it back to your question. I mentioned I was in Thailand a week or two ago. We're on 18. Andrea Lee, who's an incredible tour player, went to Stanford, but doesn't often show a ton of emotion,

makes a birdie on 18 and throws this fist bump, like she's Tiger Woods, who just won, you know, the U.S. Open. And I asked Andrea, like, that was so cool. where did that come from? And she said it's a lot easier to show emotion when you've got 8,000 fans around the 18th green. And she's right. It's hard to show that level of excitement

when the crowds aren't there. One of the reasons I should say for moving the Chevron to the memorial is to bring it closer to the heart of the action in downtown Houston. And we're excited to bring women's golf, major golf to the heart of a major city. And that's, again, nothing against the club of Carlton Woods,

the woodlands and everything. It's just the distance that it takes to go out there, truly is separated from the heartbeat of it. We have been, ever since that decision meant, I've been to every single Chevron that has been in Texas so far. You hit the nail on the head. Was that a decision that was already in motion upon your arrival? Or is that something that you picked up and said, hey, I see a potential here to make something better. Let's run downhill with it. Yeah, the good news is that we take an extremely collaborative approach to everything that we do. So by no means will the LPGA by itself take credit for this. We work very closely with our partners at Chevron.

Mike Worth, the CEO, Chevron, what a total visionary, not just for what he's doing with the tournament, but the co-mission, which is an event that happens around the Chevron to inspire future generations of leaders, thanks to the great partnership we did it together. One thing I want to chat with you about in great detail, if you'll allow me. And someone in your position, I think, is, it's an interesting conversation because we comment a lot on women's golf, comment a lot on men's golf, comment a ton on courses, course setups. You've mentioned already kind of getting to top level venues. What do you see as the value of that in terms of, you know, I personally have seen some LPGA tour majors rotate to venue. They made it a point where it seems like we want to go to venues where the men's game has also had majors.

maybe sometimes at the expense of finding a venue that fits the scale of the women's game the best, right? I could name names if you wanted me to, but I'm saying like, all right, that's a big name course. We got to go there because the men went there. Yet the women's game is played at a different scale. How do you view the way, you know, balancing kind of what we're talking about, name brand venues that are recognizable to people, yet also the course set up and the product as it relates to that, both on major championship level and, and, you know, kind of more normal tournaments, because I've got some follow-ups to that, of. what that actually means for the product that you are in charge of trying to sell as well and how that fits into all of your equation. Let's talk about that and separately.

Sure. Course selection and course setup. Spend 10 minutes in player dining with me next week at the Fortinet Founders Cup, and you'll hear players talking about just how excited they are to go play at RIV this year for the U.S. Women's Open or at Hazeltine for the KPMG Women's PGA. They get fired up. What we also know from all the research we've done on viewership is that fans tune in not just to see players, but to see courses. So it for sure makes a difference.

And it's why we're going to spend a lot of time in the coming years on course selection. Course setup. This is so important. I have to tell you, one of the coolest moments I've had as commissioner. I played in a proem with Brandl Shambly a couple of months ago at CME. And I could listen to that guy wax poetically about course set up all day long. But he said, let me just give you one example. Let's talk about 18 at Augusta National.

He said, men hit fades because they hit it so far, they want to stop the ball. Women hit draws because they want as much extra distance as they can get. 18 at Augusta, you've got a bunker on the left. The distance from the bunker to the green for a man is reachable with a nine iron for a woman they need, a seven iron, but because of the height of the lip, women often hit the edge of the lip. And it propagates this stereotype that women aren't killer golfers in the same way the men are. Actually not true, but it is fundamentally because the way that hole is set up, it disadvantages the women and advantages the men.

So as we think about the future, of course, set up for us, these are the types of factors we have to look at and take very seriously in order to show our athletes off in the best possible life. The subtle dog logo is calling our name just in time for Azalea season. Roebuck's Azalea collection is here. They got fresh prints, clean colors, and just enough spring energy to make you think this is finally your year. azalea print plus new designs to fit in whatever you need you know how much we love roback layering they just introduced the new highlands hoodie it's got no drawstrings it's got great stretch really smooth

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well before your time. But the 2019 U.S. Women's Open at Country Club of Charleston was one of the favorite women's golf events I've ever watched. And it's a, you know, Seth Rainer golf course that the men have definitely outgrown. But the scale and the, the, and this is where like I, I think I can nerd out a little bit talking about things that maybe only 15 to 20 percent of your fans really care about. Bring it on. But that's the most diehard fan. And so totally.

I guess I, I've butt up against this, this kind of argument and this take for, for some time of, I have some issues with TPC sawgrass and how that plays. when I go to the players, I don't hear any of like the 90% of fans out there being like, oh, the scale of this holds all wrong. Like nobody talks like that. But how that relates into your product, I think matters a lot in that, you know, the better the setup. And again, a lot of things go into set up, wind conditions, firmness, a lot of things that are out of control.

But the better the setup, the better you, it's going to identify the top level talent in creating stars. Am I talking the same language that you want to hear in terms of, of what would be, what would help make the LPGA tour more marketable? You're absolutely speaking our language. And by the way, our job is not just to set up courses that players go out and shoot 25 under in order to win on Sunday. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that point.

Let's use every club in the bag. Let's make sure that the best player at the end of the week wins. And that doesn't mean driver nine iron on every single home. Yeah. The most recent example, I understand. Do you get headwinds from that on players? Is there is there pushback from kind of that? There's something too also, like not wanting to beat the players up every single week.

And it is an entertainment product. And again, back to my point of like, not everybody feels this way that watches golf. Some people do want to watch it and see birdies. So I'm kind of wondering if those two philosophies are ever at odds. I wouldn't see we get blowback. There's plenty of conversation about it. Not a week goes by where we don't get a question or an idea from someone. But honestly, the best ideas come from those who are closest to the action.

I want feedback from fans. I want feedback from players. and ultimately our roles team that's responsible for course setup, we'll have to make a decision. And again, the guiding principles we've talked about. It shouldn't be easy every week. And the best player should win and it should be a challenge. Yeah, that's very well said.

And also, I think for the best women in the game, it is beneficial to have a more difficult setup. I think for the LPJ tour, I can go back 10 years now. There's this discussion of what actually brings a viewer in. And for a long time, there is a small group that said, the most birdies, the most under par, that is what excitement is on TV. And you saw that kind of trickle into the LPJ tour in the setup.

And now you see that on telecast. And I don't think that's very beneficial or doing the tour itself, the right justice. And I know last year was an outlier, but you have 32 events last year on your schedule. You had 29 different winners. That's right. I don't think you can really build stars when it's spread out that far and wide.

Yeah. You know, you have to be able to identify your top five, your top tens. And I understand, I say that was an outlier because year before you had Nelly with an incredible spring. That's right. So everything doesn't line up like that. So you look at it two ways. It's a setup thing. I know the depth is there on the tour.

I just don't think it's that deep. We're at a hundred. You don't have 100 superstars. Yeah. So it's a hard marketing question. This is probably a moment where it would be great to have Chad and we'll get him on later on a couple weeks to ask him. But it just puts you in a very difficult position when you're trying to answer so many different questions. Yeah, look, it's a fair point. And regardless of what happens inside the ropes each week, we have to be prepared.

If we have Nelly go on another tear or Gino or Charlie and win seven times in a season, like we'll be ready. believe me and our partners will be ready as well if we end up with another season where we've got you know 29 or 30 winners we're going to do the best we can to highlight the stories that we know interest our fans and and you're right course setup plays into this but at the end of the day the competition's going to do what it's going to do and we're going to do our part to get fans as excited as we can because i think we can we can overdo it on the side of the of the table on course set up stuff but i think back to like one of if not the most exciting tournaments and finishes on the LPJ tour last year was the Evian. And I think that was driven by the course setup. That 18th hole was like

literally anything could happen here. And Grace Kim was just out of control with, you know, made it made a mess of it, but then holes the chip, hits it to eight inches or whatever it was to make the eagle and regulation. I don't remember the exact order. But that, that's kind of where I'm, where I, where I feel like the LPGA tour has aired is, and the PJ tour for that matter as well is a less than stellar shot can still. be an easy par into the green. And that is going to lead to bunch of leaderboards and that's going to make it harder to separate where, you know, Scotty Sheffler, even he struggles in tournaments that are like that, but when there is a stronger penalty for even slight misses at the highest level and your

short game gets, gets then tested in a different level, that is what makes golf really interesting to me and creates your stars. And I don't know, that's, I just wanted to at least say my piece on that part. Yeah, look, it's all fair feedback and a genuine offer. I'd say come in and spend a half a day with us, come talk to our rules team. I'd love for them to hear directly from you, kind of what you think. I also think, Cody, you brought up a point around what creates viewership and what gets people to tune in. There isn't a single answer.

It's a combination of multiple factors. I go back and I use the example only because I know it and I was there at the PGA of America when we played the PGA championship at Bajala. The scores were pretty far under par. If I remember the winner was maybe 13, 14, might even been. the low 20s under par when Xander Schofley won the tournament. And I'll tell you what, having Xander come down the home stretch with some real competition. I think Victor Hovlin, Bryson was in the mix. Like it was the combination of all those factors, not scores by itself

that created the drama. And you're right, a birdie shootout by itself is not always interesting. But if you've got your top three or four players on the LPGA tour coming down the stretch, making birdie eagle, birdie or eagle birdie, or eagle birdie, like, it's super. super, super interesting. So again, not one size fits at all here. It is hard too. I mean, we talk about these things. You're in a tough position where you handle a tour, but you also run two major championships. And when we're talking about tour and normal course setups for regular LPGA tour events, but we use examples of major championships, that puts you in a tough spot. And I understand. So from your perspective, is that difficult? Is that a

different line that you have to walk. And do you view them distinctly differently because they are one, you have two major championships and the rest are all premium tour events, but they have to be weighted and treated differently? I view it as a huge opportunity. I mean, what, what a privilege to be able to put on, you know, 32, 33, 34 events in a season and to have a couple of those be majors. At the same time, it's a gift when, you know, the RNA has the AIG Women's Open or the USGA puts on the US Women's Open. Evian obviously does a phenomenal job. We're ready for everything that you've described. And I don't think there is necessarily a better model than the one we have now. And you're right. There's a reason these events or certain events are called majors. And when we get to a

major, walk the course, you feel the energy. It's different. There's a level of seriousness in the clubhouse. And our job as operators of those tournaments matches the grabby toss of each of those events. How can the LP, if I was to challenge you with some opportunities for the LPGA tour to break the mold of how the product is presented on television. And let's just let's dream for a while and not, let's pretend there's not media contracts in this. But deal if you could say like I would love to be if, you know, maybe in three years. And I know these things, you know, turning over an engine or whatever the phrase is you, you right know that one. But it's not easy to do overnight. But if you could say like, hey, three years from now, or maybe five years from now,

and you're in a new media deal, what LPGA Tour Golf would look like on television and how it would look different than it does now? What does that dream look like? Well, we're dreaming big, right? So I don't want to give off the false hope or impression that anything we're talking about here is going to happen overnight. But if we could wave our magic wands, a few things would happen.

Every shot on every hole. As a fan, you can tune in, whether you're in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, anywhere in the United States or Europe, You can watch your favorite players. Another thing that we were talking about earlier today before we got going is how cool would it be to have every player and caddy miced up and be able to hear not just what happens right before a shot or right after a shot, but in the walkup to a difficult situation. Like, hey, what are we going to do?

You hear the interaction between Nellie and Jason as an example. Like that is pure entertainment, especially for, you know, folks that are listening to this podcast, some of the most diehard golfers in the world. You've been in similar situations before, but to get inside the mind of an LPGA tour player to hear what she's thinking about, I think that would be incredible. Do you have a membership that's supportive of that for safe? I think we've got an unbelievably supportive membership. I think the membership wants to understand the why behind all of our asks. We did it. The tournament of champions this year put on by Hilton Grand Vacations.

We had Lottie Wode, Lydia Coe, and Nellie Cora do a walk-and-talk with the tournament. in the first 30 minutes of the broadcast in one or two of those players cases. I don't think they'd ever done that before. And they're doing it to start this season. So, yeah, I think we've got to really support. And I know there's challenges with that of, you know, being miced up for four and a half hours. And, you know, not knowing if your worst moment's going to get captured on there. You took the bottom 10% of my rounds of golf of what I've said.

Even knowing I'm miced up, I'd be like, I hope that doesn't make the edit. I get, I get that challenge. but I do think there's opportunities to bring people in, bring people closer, and to definitely to try different things. And do you feel, I guess, like in kind of your tenure here, do you feel like you are brought in to specifically to do things differently? And do you feel like you have both the cachet and the relationship with the players to push through the change? And maybe, you know, what are maybe some examples of some headwinds you've been, you face so far in your tenure? You know, this was never explicitly said to me, but it's how I feel.

I feel like the LPGA has the raw ingredients and more potential than maybe any other sports league in the world. Why is that? Our players get to know and listen to the stories of the sacrifice they've made. Their parents have made the grind to get here. Look at some of the things they're doing in their personal lives. They're entertaining human beings, but the world hasn't yet been given exposure to all these things. So to answer your question, like was I brought here to drive change? I was brought here to maximize

the potential of this place. It's to find a way to tell stories and get people to fall in love and listen to Megan Kang as she walks down the fairways and she's telling jokes. And when someone asks her, you know, how far do you hit the ball? And she responds with, well, proportional to my height, I hit the crap at the ball. It's like, yeah, like that world wants to hear stuff. So whether that's change or that's capitalizing on opportunity, yes and yes. In terms of the headwinds, look, we put a man on the moon like 60 years ago. I used this all the time. Like, anything's possible.

Right. When I started in this job, there were a handful of people who said, you know, Craig, it'll never work. Don't take the job. You're never going to be live on TV. The quality of the LPGA broadcast is not great, especially compared to their peers on the men's side. And here we are seven or eight or nine months later. And we've solved for many of those things, not all of them.

I realize we have our work cut out for us and there's, you know, endless headwinds, but I also like at my core believe anything is possible. Do you talk to us a little bit? I mean, we've touched on it here a couple of times, but like, how were you able to change the broadcast elements that you were able to change so quickly, right? I mean, if you come in, you get a couple home runs in your first couple of bats, if I may say moving the Chevron, I thought was a great move. And because we sit on this side of the table.

We throw out ideas every single week. week and this it's really easy on this side to throw out a bunch of ideas yeah but we're always told how you're wrong you don't understand how things work and these things are hard and you come into the job and you're like no we're going to be on we're going to be live on tv for every event this year how are you able to get that done so quickly yeah i'd tell you what a crazy amount of teamwork and a dose of maybe inspiration um and i started my career in golf at top golf 10 years ago and when i was there i started to get to know the guys at the golf channel so i'd known mark lazarus and tom now for a while. Matt Hong, president of sports at Versant, obviously knew, but those preexisting relationships

mattered a lot. And Tom and I went away for a day or two and talked about dreaming big and what's possible. And sure enough, you know, a handful of months later, here we are with Golf Channel announcing every round live, either on Golf Channel or CNBC. The dose of inspiration, you know, I went to the FM championship in Boston, incredible event, got to know Malcolm Roberts, the CEO, and as all good stories begin, we went on a long meandering walk together. I'd say halfway through the hour-long walk, I realized, man, this is a guy who dreams big and takes a shot. And for anybody who knows about FM, and I won't give you all the details, but it's a 100-plus-year-old insurance company that fundamentally transformed how commercial insurance is provided, I realized Malcolm and his company wanted to transform the LPGA and the way we show up.

And with a little bit of inspiration, I think we convinced Malcolm and his team that the LPGA is worth betting on. And here we are. It does seem like you, the LPGA, both before your time and during your short tenure as well, has an incredible amount of support from sponsors that do trust the vision and see the vision in terms of like, if we're looking for like dollars per eyeball, like the women's game is doing excellent in terms of the money that's coming in the door. you know, for the, for the impression, if you were look at it soullessly of impression based, it seems like the support around the women's tour seems has been quite strong for quite some time.

It's off the chart. So we actually, this is pretty wild, 75 year old organization. We honestly still feel like a startup in so many ways. But we'd never had a partner summit where we actually brought all of our partners together in one room to know each other, to do business with one another, give us their ideas. And we did it this week in Utah at Black Desert. And I wish all of your listeners could have been a fly on the wall in the room. Laura Rutledge from ESPN moderated.

We had the CMO, the WNBA, Phil Cook with us to keynote and talk about how the W had its breakthrough moment. They got prepared for it. Jim Fitterling, the CEO of Dow, one of our biggest sponsors was there. You could feel the excitement for the LPGA in the room. And as I said at one point, I think we're the most undervalued stock that's out there today. Call it discounted growth. Use whatever euphemism you want.

But the sky is the limit for this organization. And thankfully, it's in part to the partners who are already with us that have created the incredible momentum we've got. I'm curious kind of what players you in. I may ask you to name names on this one specifically, are seem to be like the most invested in kind of the vision of the LPGA tour and wanting to do their part. to support the greater hole, like some examples of some players that, you know, go out of their way to,

because we, we've experienced that when we, I think the first LPJ experience I ever had was back in like 2018. We played a pro-am with Jane Park and Tiffany Joe. And we just walked away of like, holy crap, that was so much fun. They were so raw. They were so funny. And they, but it seemed like Mike Juan instilled in, in the players back in the day of like, when somebody's showing up for a pro, am, like, hey, you're on. Like, it's time to be on. These people are, are right in. the checks that you're playing for, leave a note in their lot, you know, do all of these things. And I'm just kind of curious, kind of some examples you've had of players that are like, oh, this is how you treat sponsors. This is how you do it. Yeah. So let me first actually

acknowledge some of the legends of the game. I mean, some of the players like Julie Inkster, Judy Rankin, or the more modern version of legends, Angela Stanford, Brittany Lincolum, Cheyenne Woods. These are women who raise their hand every week to come out and do their part to help. All those athletes I mentioned were out at Pebble Beach for our 75th anniversary. They helped us raise over $4 million for the LPGA Foundation. And they were with us in Black Desert, many of them for the partner summit we just had. Of our current players, I would divide it into two camps. There's the big names that everybody's already familiar.

It's the top three. It's Nellie, Charlie, and Gino based on kind of how they're playing now. And they get it. And they're doing their part to help. There are also a whole bunch of other names behind the scenes. that maybe don't get mentioned as often, but these are women who lean in and say, if you need me, I'm there. Megan Kang is an example.

Yulemi knows an example. Austin Kim, Angel Yin. These are women who will literally be the first to show up and the last to leave if they know there's an opportunity to help. Because it does seem like even, you know, some of the pro-am parties we've been to, like, the players show up for that. You couldn't have dragged a PGA tour player in their wildest dreams to one of those on like a Wednesday night right before the tournament.

but you look around like, oh, Lexi's here tonight, you know, there's Michelle, back in the day, there's Michelle Wee. And like, the stars come out to support the sponsors. And I'll tell you another story, too, about the stars not just coming out in highly visible ways. I'll never forget a tough day as commissioner early in my tenure, the Walmart championship. It was like historic torrential rains. You remember this? We had to call it after two of three rounds.

It's a unique tournament with only three competition rounds. and Walmart was so upset. But they went above and beyond to do more than they had to do. And they paid a larger purse than they were obligated to pay because they wanted to show the players how appreciative they are of the players' efforts. I met my kid's baseball game on a Sunday and the phone rings. And it's Lexi Thompson. And she's like, Craig, what can I do to go say thank you?

And sure enough, I said, Lexi, senior leadership from Walmart. They're at the course right now. If you could just stop by, give him a hug and a high five to say thank you, it would go a long way. Lexi says, I'm in the gym right now. Give me like five minutes. I'll go take a shower. I'll head over to the course and I'll be right there. Like this is Lexi Thompson taking a moment out of her beat out of her routine to go say thank you to our sponsors. And there were no cameras on. But that's the type of, I think, buy-in we have from our superstars. All right. Now that we, now that we, you know, praise the players, what do they complain about

the most? What do they, what kind of grievances do they, do they come to you about? Is there a theme kind of behind the changes in things that they would like to see. You know what? And again, hand on heart, like this is the truth. I don't get what I think the word you use with grievances or complaints. I get a lot less of that than you might expect. I get a lot of questions. Like, help me understand the logic behind this pin placement. Help me understand why you rejiggered T times and the leaders aren't going off last. And it's like, well, let us explain how TV network windows work. And this matters a lot to our sponsors and to our fans. not 100% of the time, but whatever, nine out of 10 times the players go, you know,

thank you for explaining it to me. I now get it. And by the way, this is just human nature as you're trying to drive change and buy and helping people understand the why behind a decision is like nine-tenths of the change management battle. And I've tried really hard, maybe even to a detriment once or twice, to be wildly accessible, super transparent. And if players want to pick up the phone and call or come find me on the range or in

player dining, like, do it. We're going to have a real conversation about it. We talked to you shortly after what happened at Hilton to start the year. What's kind of been the trail of that in terms of your relationships with players and kind of how that all, you know, how that communication process has been since then and kind of feedback you've gotten from players. Let's actually start with the team because I do feel bad. The team at the LPGA were put in a really tough spot because of a decision that I made.

And one of the more, I would say, important or formative moments I've had since joining was standing up in front of our full team and apologizing and had tears in my eyes got super choked up. And the reason for that is, you know, Cody, you asked about the four pillars before trust is number one, two, three, and four, if we're being honest. And I felt like maybe I had not done a great job earning and respecting the importance of that trust. It was brutal. I mean, two weeks straight, hitting my stomach, sick to my stomach, not really sleeping through the night because I take this very seriously and I made a mistake. With the players, the players have been great. They again, hey, give us some behind the scenes, walk us through the logic. Okay, good.

Let's go play golf. And I think we've turned the page and I can't wait for the start of the U.S. swing. What did you learn from it? A lot. You know, when I was at Top Golf, we had a super complex business. to operate, 75 venues, 25,000 employees, 25 million or so guests at the time. And what made us great was that we had process that we could apply in a very similar way to every single venue, had routines. We had contingency plans. I don't think we have all of that fully fleshed out

yet at the LPGA. We have a lot of it. And we have more of it today than we had three weeks ago, but we still have some work to do and making sure we are like ruthlessly buttoned up on all things operations is important and by the way and this is not an excuse it's an observation you know we have roughly 200 people on staff at the l pGA compare that to the pGA tour which has last i checked over i think 1,100 maybe 1,200 employees and we're pulling off a similar number of events so one of our challenges is to go out and kill it in the marketplace find new sponsors find ways to be able to support our very limited staff creatively so that when we are under the gun and we have a series of really tough decisions that have to be made, like we've got enough

people around the table in order to make those tough calls. We spend an obscene amount of time obsessing over our gear, getting fitted for shafts, tweaking lie angles, making sure everything fits our game perfectly. And then most of us go home and sleep on a completely generic pillow that we bought five years ago. It makes absolutely no sense. We partner with Lagoon because the idea is simple. If you custom fit your clubs, why wouldn't you custom fit your pillow? You go to lagoon sleep.com slash NLU, take a two-minute quiz about how you sleep and they match you to the pillow that actually fits your body type.

It's adjustable as well so you can dial it in exactly how you want it. I can now say firsthand. I've been waking up without a stiff neck sleeping so much better. And it feels just way better ahead of an early tea time. And, you know, it's if you're going to spend eight hours on something, like, make sure it's quality. That's the biggest endorsement I can give to Lagoon Pillows. So if you're serious about marginal gains, start with the eight hours before the round. Go to lagoonsleep.com slash NLU. Code nLU will get you 15% off. Again, LagoonSleep.com

slash NLU, code NLU for 15% off. Back to Craig Kessler. What, you know, we did talk, we broke it down in detail kind of from that. I think one kind of follow up I had from that that maybe I didn't ask very well when we had the initial conversation shortly after that was where I guess you think the mistake was, right? You know, we can go through the whole timeline of what happened there. But, you know, there's an unsafe, potentially unsafe conditions out there, yet players went back out to finish round three in that scenario. I'm wondering if you could just lay out the timeline kind of, of, I think I understand

where I would guess you would call where the mistake was and how you got to the solution of 54 holes, but not to bring up a traumatizing couple of weeks. Well, as excited as I am to rehash this with you guys. Yeah, let's build that trust. We're building up. Yeah, let's do it. You know, here's how I think about it after having a little bit of time between the event and where we are today. It was like a perfect storm.

It was. Like, when else are we going to be at a tournament with sub-freezing temperatures, multiple days throughout the tournament? In Florida. In Florida, you've got a celebrity pro-am. You've got a sponsor that paid for time. on the network on NBC, not on Golf Channel. That time is early in the morning. You've got Onica, one of the greatest of all times out on the course speaking to the press about as a celebrity.

As a celebrity. How playable it is. How playable it is. Like guys, I just don't know if those right, right. Like it's just it was it was awful. Yeah. And super messy. So there wasn't one single mistake. There were a handful of mistakes. Like in hindsight, should the celebrities have gone off? no way. If it's not safe enough for the players, then the celebrities should go off. And should we have had somebody in the media center standing there with Beth Ann and Amy Rogers? Like, of course, Beth Ann is a mouthpiece to so many of our fans. And Amy Rogers could be live on TV in two seconds explaining to fans what's going on. So that's another example of a mistake.

Earlier in the week when we saw the forecast, could we have figured out how to get more play in earlier in the week? so we could have finished late on Sunday afternoon or perhaps finished early on Monday morning. Like, of course. And back to the point earlier around repeatable process, like we built at Topgolf, it's the exact same thing here. And believe me, if you've seen some of the things we've done differently with our own internal comm since then, like, we're moving aggressively. Things have it right in saying, you know, again, on the specifics of it, it's, all right, the conditions are unsafe. We have decided to make this a 54-hole tournament. Now we get into the afternoon.

It's warmed up a little bit. The course is safe enough now that we can finish round three. At this point, you've already called it 54 holes. Are you kind of like, ah, we maybe could have stretched this to Monday. We could have. Totally. Because that's where I think it, but to your point of it being a perfect storm, but the confusion of, you know, once you've already made that decision,

you know, because that's where I think you caught a little bit of heat was sending players out in the afternoon, yet determining it was unsafe was where some of the confusion was. It is totally fair. Yeah. I appreciate you making a decision standing on it. I know this is before your time, but I think the last, the LPJ tour has an incredible bad luck when it comes to public spectacles. And I think when people think of rider cups or Solheim cups, the massive first thing is, oh, my goodness, opening day. It's early in the morning.

Crowds are there. The stands are swollen with USA chance and everything. We're in right outside of DC a couple years back. Remember, we were there. And the stands were empty. And there was this as media there that morning, this gut feeling of, oh man. This is not good. I feel horrible.

I need to be honest as I was doing Sky TV in the mornings that week. And I had to be as honest as I was. And, you know, there's people in your. organization that I'm friends with. I understand what was going on. Yeah. There's a situation that just, you know, a series of things that happened that should have never happened and then a massive delay in communication. And I think coming out of that, there was there was never really a cleanup done. There was a we're identifying that we made a mistake here. We will do better moving forward. Trust us. And the trust and continued communication

never really came back around. Whereas in this, you know, for Hilton this year, there was a conscious decision, not just to own it, and to try to get ahead of the messaging. But you came on us, you went on a lot of other people and tried to continue to message your decision-making process. And take it a step further and say, no, we actually have identified things that have gone wrong.

We're figuring out ways to implement them so they will not happen again in the future. And it's set such a standard, for for for hope of what the future of the LPGA is going to be operationally and i you know kind of thank you for that i appreciate you saying that it means a lot um and again it was a tough period i hope never happens again and aside from the last five minutes of this chat don't want to relive ever again it's all it's one more thing here yeah i i like this was the best like conversations i've heard about it like it's very human that's the whole the whole thing is

like there's humans behind the people making these these calls totally and and here and here's the God's honest truth. Again, for a small lean organization that's a challenger brand, we don't have the luxury of already having all the eyeballs we want. We've got to go get them. We've got to earn them. I promise you, we are going to make mistakes. There will be another apology for something at some point in the future. And you know what? The best organizations in the world have an appetite to try some things and see if they work. And if they do, great. We're going to keep doing them. And if they don't, like, we'll try something new. But I know for a fact we're going to make mistakes. And the only thing I'd ask is that people give us a little bit of grace.

And they understand that the mistakes are coming from a very good place. And your job is way harder. Like I was going to say, we make mistakes all the time. But it's like, oh, I got the rules wrong on the pod last week. No big deal. I'll apologize for it and move on. This is a little different. The stakes are a little different at your level, definitely. So we, We definitely recognize that. But I'm curious, have you talked to Molly Marcousa Mon much about the role or Mike I'm curious if you have relationships with prior commissioners as to, you know, was there much of a transition period in any of that and kind of have you gotten here's where

the bodies are buried kind of conversation from either of them? Yeah, I've talked to a bunch of commissioners. Let me tell you, for those you don't know, Charlie Meacham, I think he's like 91 years old and one of the sharpest human beings I've ever spoken to. And Charlie calls from time to time, usually with a dose of inspiration and a whole bunch of ideas. So Charlie, if you're listening, keep calling because he's an awesome man. I talked to Mike quite a bit. I've known Mike for just shy of a decade.

Mike loves this place. In fact, not only does he love it, this place loves Mike. And I think we have an award still inside the LPGA called the Mike Wan Act Like a Founder Award, because he did such an amazing job shepherding this place during his day. decade as commissioner. And I've also known Molly for the last five or six years. Molly and I worked together when I was at the PGA of America and she was commissioner. She reached out to say congratulations when I got the job. We've spoken once or twice. And I was really pumped to see Molly take on a leadership role running. I think it's like U.S. squash. Which, you know,

good for Molly. And again, all the commissioners that I've spoken to have been great. What is, what would you say is the hardest part of being a commissioner? This is the most intense thing I've ever done professionally. It's seven days a week. It's, you know, early in the morning, late at night, sometimes again late at night when you wake up wondering what more can we do, how much faster can we go. The stakeholder environment is as gnarly as they come. 200 players, 1,000 legends, the media, our sponsors, our partners, our staff. our family. By the way, I'm a dad of three young boys. They're six, eight, and ten. I'm crazy about them. I'm

crazy about my wife. And finding a way to sort of keep it all together. I've never done anything this intense. And I think all of those things combined are the biggest challenge. Do you anticipate that evolving and changing it with more experience in terms of everybody needs work life balance? And again, I'm a podcaster. My work life balance is out of control at that time. And golf is a seven day, a week. job to your point. And I'm saying in your shoes, it's a lot more, a lot more intense and the stakes are a lot different to say, do you think there'll be a kind of a learning curve element to it? And once you kind of get into a flow, you'll be able to find the balance a little bit better. 100%. I'm already starting to feel it now. I mean, part of the solution is there's that phrase you use

work life balance. We talk a bit about like work life integration. And our kids have been on tour four times in the last nine months. In addition, my wife, you know, came with me to Korea. And she was at the summit this past week in Utah. So they're a part of the adventure, which helps a lot. We're hiring an incredible team. We talked earlier about Chad, Monica, Casey, in addition to the great leadership team we already have. And I'm also getting my sea legs under me. So I do expect that it will get better with time, but this will never be a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 sort of thing. Part of that balance. Was staying in Dallas a red line for you? The best way to answer that question is not forever, but in the short run, yes.

Again, three boys, they're in school, all of our friends and their kids sports teams. It's here. Life. Life. Yeah, it's like the perfect way of saying it. Life is here. And I'm on the road, I don't know, 220 days a year. So before we kind of upset the apple cart and disrupt everything we're doing, let's go get our sea legs first. how is that gone on the home front so far i mean how was the the adjustment uh you know how are you finding that uh as it works into your home life look there's there are days but overall it's been amazing it's got to be hard but but then when the tours in asia i imagine that's not the easiest on you just put the time zone differences and yeah but face time's a magical thing as we all know as parents i'd say the the cool thing too i mentioned our kids being part of the

adventure. One of my favorite moments, it actually happened before I started. It was the KPMG women's PGA championship. I'd been announced, but was starting a few weeks later. And my wife and I took our three boys to the tournament on Saturday. We bought them each a bucket hat, like an LPGA floppy bucket hat. We gave them a sharpie marker and we said, all right, boys, hear the rules. There's two of them. One, don't tell anybody your dad's commissioner of the LPGA. And two, go have fun. We'll see in an hour or two. And they came back, I don't know, a couple hours later with 40 or 50 signatures on their bucket hats. They had signed gloves, signed balls. They had the time of their lives.

And now on the weekends, they and their pals asked to turn on the LPGA on TV because they got their first taste and they fell in love. You asked earlier, you know, why do I see so much potential? It's personal moments like those where I see what happens when fans get access to our athletes who are just accessible, cool, interesting. and people fall in love like my kids. And to know that when dad's on the road in wherever, Asia or Europe, kids understand what dad's doing and they feel a small part of it, I think helps a lot. There's something to, like, most of my golf fandom can get traced back

to being from Dublin, Ohio, where the memorial tournament is, and where I went. And like, I had my experience with the LPGA as a kid was not extensive, but there was an LPGA, the Wendy's, the three-tour challenge, I think, whatever it was back in the day, was at tartan field like a it was only a couple years at tartan field but it was like that that touch point and entry point uh for people it i guess my overall point is you you you the tour moves around a lot and there's there are certain like what are what are some of like the most core events in

terms of like locations where you can see that lpj tour being for a really long time because they've been there a long time and like we have a foundation and we the the market makes the most i think of toledo like you got the lpj tour has owned toledo Northwest Arkansas Walmart. Yeah. It's a fair question. And the answer is dependent on what you're trying to optimize for.

So if you're trying to optimize for the fan experience, going to these smaller cities, Midland, Michigan would be another one for the Dow championship. I mean, the entire community shows up. This is one of those towns where the main street is actually called Main Street. Like those, those, you know, let's just call them tier two, tier three cities that don't often get the love from professional sports organizations. organizations, those are home runs for the fan experience. Now, earlier we talked about playing

some of the best courses, right? We talked about Riviera as an example. That's in the heart of Los Angeles, a major media market, maybe tougher to actually cut through the noise and get fans to show up. But when you think about the broadcast potential and fans tuning in to watch, it doesn't get any better than Riv. So it again goes back to what are you trying to optimize for and based on the answer may lead you down a different path. When you first started out, I imagine one of the first things you're doing is placing phone calls to essentially every sponsor and introducing relationships. What feedback did you get from them of kind of, hey, here's what's going good? Did you see themes of like, here's what's going good and here's where I'd like things to

approve on a sponsor by sponsor basis? I'm sure that the answers are different. But what general themes did you get both in the positive and on the negative side from them? Can I tell you what my biggest fear was? Anytime you go through an interview process, as you mentioned earlier, it's a bit of a sell on both sides. And my biggest fear was, what are they not telling me? Like, am I going to show up on day one and, oh, my God, this didn't come out during the process? What I got when I started was very encouraging. I would say 50 or so percent of the sponsors that I spoke to, they were all in and super excited for the next chapter. There was maybe, you know, 30 or 40 percent that had a couple of questions around the edges just to make sure like the tour is everything we say we're going

to be. And when they had their questions answered, you could feel the enthusiasm through the Zoom screen or if we were in person, you know, I could feel it in the room. And then there was, I don't know, 10, maybe 20 percent that had very serious questions about the LPGA's future and question whether this was an investment they wanted to continue making. That's a pretty reasonable ratio for somebody coming in. And, you know, look, there are one or two folks that have said, you know, it probably makes sense for us to spend our dollars elsewhere. And that's okay. Because to be clear, the partners we want around the table are the ones who are excited to be here.

They're going to use their megaphone to pump up the tour. And we have to be okay with moving on from relationships that aren't, you know, perfect. And I think one of the big things that you've touted, too, is your willingness and openness to talk to anybody who wants to get into the business. You're the first commissioner who is, you know, the LET is. You know, the LET has had an LET event in the United States going on for a couple of years now. It's moved different locations, but part of the RAMCO series, you're now co-s sanctioning it this year for Las Vegas. Can you talk about that tournament in itself and kind of the relationship with the Ladies European Tour? Yeah, I'd love to.

Let me break this into two parts. One is our responsibility to unite women's professional golf. And then two, let's talk about the Saudis and the LET. On uniting professional golf, we take this very seriously. The world saw what happened on the men's side, and it looks like the world's coming back together finally after a few years. But it was a mess. And if that happens to the women's game, I mean, you thought the tournament of champions week was a bad week. That would be on a whole other level.

Before you continue, have you heard plans of that happening? Of what? On the men's side. On the women's side? No. No, no, no, no. And this is the point I'm going to get to, which is like, let's get ahead of anything and try and unite the game as best we can. So I'll give you an example of something we did this week, for example.

We announced that the winners of the four major global women's amateurs will get an exemption into the Portland Classic. So the USGA, the USAM, the R&A, M, Women's Am, the Augusta National Women's Amateur, and then the NCAA Women's Champion. All four of those players, the first time ever. will get an exemption to play together in the Portland Classic. We're doing that for a bunch of reasons, but the primary reason is to try and unite everybody who touches the women's game in a meaningful way. The same thing holds true of the Ladies European Tour

and Golf Saudi, who's been a big sponsor on the Ladies European Tour for the last five years. The LET matters for a bunch of reasons, but I'll give you the one that excites me the most. If I'm a little girl in Europe, and I wake up one day, I think it is so important to have women who come from my country, maybe even my hometown, who I can aspire to be like. And that's what the ladies European tour does.

It inspires future generations of golfers to be just like those professional athletes. And that's why we've been in a joint venture with them for the last four or five years. Golf Saudi, no different. Golf Saudi has poured, if I did the math, probably north of a hundred million dollars. into the Ladies European tour over time. That's an amazing investment. And I know there are some who don't like that, but honestly, who are we to stand in the way of the Saudis funding the hopes and dreams of women professional golfers? And so part of the reason for doing a co-sanctioned event at Shadow Creek this year

with the LET and with the Gulf Saudi is it's another proof point of the LPGA trying to lead from the front and unite the women's game. That's very well said. then a great opportunity, great venue, great location for it and time on the schedule. As I look at, you know, you do have a financial investment in the ladies European tour. I always say and see more opportunities for potential for co-s sanction events as you're looking at your global schedule. And I know we jump up and down all the time. Just there's some incredible national opens that are out there.

You're, we've talked about two Asian swings. we're getting ready or we're starting now on the ladies European tour side. They're in Australia for a month and who doesn't want to play in Australia for a month. Totally. Seeing the Australian Open as a co-s sanction LET, LPGA tour event, getting the best players in the world to Australia. So they can go and people who grew up, their idols are Minji and Hannah and all these great Australian women.

Grace. But now you have Nellie's there and Lydia's there from, you know, you just see all these people and you're exposing more people to the game, which I know is part of your ethos and what you want to do. So I just challenge you as you go through the scheduling side of it to get more of those that would be great. Challenge accepted. And I think you're actually on to something. You reference national opens and we see huge potential there.

I mean, if you go from a national open with players, but very few recognizable names, to some of the best LPGA athletes on tour being released during conflicting weeks to be able to go back and play in their national open. Again, back to this, call it what you want, altruistic, moral reasons for uniting the women's game. When Hannah Green or Grace Kim get to go back and play in their home country and young girls look at them and say, I want to be like my fellow country woman, that's where the magic happens. What would you, we've long clamored for more collaboration with the LPGA tour, with the PGA tour.

Yep. One, do you, in what ways would that benefit the LPGA tour? Two, do you have a relationship with Brian Rolap? Do you see that as possibilities in the future? And kind of what, what, if you were to make the case to them of why there should be more crossover in whatever way, one would that, what would that look like? There's a lot of questions in one. What would that look like? Yeah.

And why, why should they do it? Yeah. The answer is, and you can go kind of tour by tour, governing body by governing body. I and we have great relationships with people across all of those organizations, including Brian Rollout. He and I've spent a decent amount of time together. We're getting together with the players. So yeah, we're absolutely connected. And it's not just at the top.

If you look lower into the organization, our sales teams talk to one another, our marketing teams talk to one another. Today we do a little bit. We have the Grant Thornton Invitational, which you're familiar with the week after the CME. It's a co-ed tournament. We both support it. And it's actually great. It's cool to see Lauren Coglin win this year, by the way. Amen.

She's an awesome, awesome human being. There's so much more we can do. Whether it's finding a way to cross-pollinate sponsors, whether it's additional joint events, whether it's finding a way to, frankly, find economies of scale. And instead of everybody building their own setups and tearing them down, you know, disparate weeks throughout the year, can we piggyback?

The U.S. Women's Open, by the way, we're going to have back-to-back weeks at Pinehurst. It was awesome in 14. It was great. It's going to be unbelievable. It's great. Yeah. So look, this has been written about.

You look across virtually all the golf organizations, not all but most, PGA of America, the R&A, the PGA tour, us. There's a lot of new leadership in golf right now. And it's going to take us a minute to build the level of trust that's necessary in order to pull off some really big ideas with one another, but know that the intent is there. How much does it help when you have an organization like the Olympics? thinking of LA 28. You have a mixed competition to it now. Yeah. That is taking something that was kind of an idea of a mixed co-ed event, LPGA tour, PGA tour,

and now throwing it onto the biggest stage globally that you possibly can. It helps enormously. There will be medals allocated to that. Totally. You know? It's such a good question. It helps enormously for a bunch of reasons. And I'll tell you the one that gets me most excited, most recent summer.

Olympics, Team USA is playing and who's on the sidelines. You've got LeBron there cheering him on. And by the way, it wasn't just good. Bron might watch more LPJ tour golf. He's all over. It's crazy. As Nelly is on TV, it seems like he is tweeting or posting stories about it. Yeah, it was amazing to see what's happened there.

And I hope the two of them get together at some point and get him up for a pro. Yeah. It'd be amazing. But yeah, when he's there, it didn't just elevate Team USA. It elevated LeBron. Like, how cool was that? We tried to actually, it's not Olympics, but you mentioned the Ryder Cup earlier. We tried to do it this year.

So on the first T of the Ryder Cup, we had Angela Stanford and Anna Nordquest there and their, you know, continents colors cheering on the men's team. And on heart, I really hope when the Ryder Cup, excuse me, the Solheim Cup comes along in the Netherlands this fall, that the Ryder Cup captains are there doing the same for our athletes. Is it frustrating at times that when using the Ryder Cup, as an example. Yeah. Probably the lack of media attention that's something like that, that you guys probably

worked really hard to get in place and get people signed up for and to do. And then all of a sudden you do it and you execute it. And you're thinking that like, oh, this might get some headlines and stuff outside of normal LPGA reach that it doesn't. Do you think the LPG, I don't want to say the LPGA tour is owed anything. But what do you think the next steps need to be done to, to, to make? make it so it is reaching a larger audience. We're going to be like water on a rock.

It takes a long time to grind it down and eventually get it to where you need it to be. Would it have been nice to have the world blow up because we had two amazing Solheim Cup captains on the first team? Of course, did I expect it would happen? Not really, but four years from now, six years from now, eight years from now. And we're going to just keep working our butts off to get there. That was a leading question on my part. how far his outlet was.

Very well, Solheim Cup. I'm so excited for the Netherlands. It's going to be a lot of fun. Craig, we really appreciate you spending an hour with us. I know you got a busy day as well, but great to meet up in person.

Great to hear some success stories already from your tenure. We look forward to seeing how it all plays out. Listen, I'm so appreciative of you guys having me on. You are massive LPGA fans and what you do to help tell our story. It means a lot. Keep it up. Whatever we can do to help, whether it's providing access, interesting opportunities.

We talk about ideas. If you've got them, we want them and just know that we come at this with a wildly open mind. And we're excited to do even more with you. We got that on tape. We can play that back in any time we have a request. So like, thank you again. Thank you. Thanks, guys.