After this week's installment, PGA Tour Confidential will take a few weeks off. Check back regularly, however, because we will convene the roundtable as the news requires. For an archive of the series, go here.
Cameron Morfit, senior writer, Golf Magazine: Greetings all. We're lucky to have esteemed course designer Tom Doak among our panel of dimpleheads this week. We are also blessed with a ton of news to talk about. (Isn't this supposed to be the off-season?)
In addition to Tiger's win in Australia, Michelle Wie finally broke through on the LPGA, making a birdie on 18 to win the Lorena Ochoa Invitational at Guadalajara C.C. Does this portend a new era? Will Wie now run off a string of Ws the way David Duval did when he finally closed the deal?
Tom Doak: Does the LPGA even have five events in a row to win next year?
Damon Hack, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Greetings to Tom, who once put up with me carrying his clubs for 18 holes at Sebonack. I can't think of a bigger story than Wie winning on the LPGA Tour. Right or wrong, she could mean as much for that Tour as Tiger does for the PGA Tour, though in miniature. In some ways, it's too bad it happened in such a busy sports calendar, with the NFL in full roar.
Farrell Evans, writer-reporter, Sports Illustrated: Wie was obviously due to win a tournament, and she did it in fine fashion. Now we only have to hope that she can have that Tiger-like effect on the LPGA Tour.
Jim Herre, managing editor, SI Golf Group: Shipnuck has been predicting that Wie would win before the end of the year. In fact, I believe he said she would win out or somesuch.
Doak: To me, nothing is more important to the growth of golf than the success of the LPGA Tour. We're not likely to pick up more participation among men. Women are the growth market. And women might be more likely to bring their kids, which is the real point.
Herre: Tom, couldn't agree more. Getting women to play, and retaining them as players, is the Holy Grail.
Rick Lipsey, writer-reporter, Sports Illustrated: My wife is a typical woman golfer, and she has zero interest in the LPGA. She wants to watch Tiger, Phil, Vijay, etc.
Evans: More women golfers won't mean greater success for the LPGA Tour. The girls like watching the guys. It's a fact.
Herre: But some guys like watching certain girls. It's the law of nature.
Dick Friedman, senior editor, Sports Illustrated: More women golfers might mean more identification with the best women golfers. Or so I keep telling my daughter as I try to get to her to take up the game.
Michael Bamberger, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: At LPGA events, I see far more women in the galleries than I do at men's events, on a percentage basis, at least.
Doak: Girls need role models, too. How many more of them started playing soccer after the success of the U.S. women's team? Annika got a lot of girls to take up the game — in Sweden, where they paid more attention to what she was doing. If Michelle Wie starts winning, there will be more TV coverage and more attention and more girls interested in the game. (Not the women, though. They would rather watch Villegas.)
Anne Szeker, producer, Golf.com: The success of the U.S. women's team has done a lot for women's soccer, but it hasn't led to enough fan support to sustain a women's soccer league. Wie's win is great for the game in general, and if she continues to win, she will inspire young girls. (Who will someday be the women who bring their children to the course.) The LPGA, though, will need more than Wie to find continued success in the mainstream.
Doak: That's just it. I don't want more women playing golf to make the Tour successful. I want the LPGA Tour to be more successful so that more women will want to play golf. For the health of the sport, participation trumps the Tours.
David Dusek, deputy editor, Golf.com: I think this may be one of the most important wins in the history of women's golf. Michelle Wie's potential to bring more attention to the LPGA Tour, to attract more viewers on TV and to inspire more girls and women to start playing golf is huge. With the LPGA Tour needing positive news going into 2010, and needing to attract more sponsors, this is gigantic.
Evans: At LPGA Tour events you see avid women golfers, but not the average sports fan who might attend a PGA Tour event with her husband or girlfriends to see Tiger or Phil. The LPGA would probably say its numbers are fine for women spectators. But the most important people haven't been convinced: potential sponsors who might want to sell a product to women. Viagra and Cialis have spent tens of millions in golf and other sports because they know they can reach men.
PGA Tour Confidential: World Match Play ChampionshipFootball Manager 2010 looks like best yet
