The Wire: Golf's Only Daily Transaction Newsletter

Editor's Note: On Nov. 18, LPGA Commissioner Ty Votaw gave his State of the Tour address prior to the season-ending ADT Championship at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Fla. Following is the transcript from that address.

COMMISSIONER TY VOTAW: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming.

As I always do at the beginning of my State of the Tour at this facility, I want to give special thanks to Mike Snyder and his staff at ADT for allowing us to hold this press conference here during this week and their support of the LPGA and certainly their commitment to the LPGA in terms of their sponsorship of this event, their sponsorship to the organization as a whole. An additional thanks to Donald Trump for hosting us at such a wonderful property, Trump International.

With this being the final event of 2004, I thought it would be appropriate for me to not only look back as to what the year of 2004 has meant to the LPGA in terms of performance and business successes, but also to look forward to 2005 and talk about the business successes that we anticipate for next year.

In talking about 2004, as is becoming something of a broken record over the past four years, you have to start with the performance of Annika Sorenstam. Certainly her seven wins so far this year is a continued reflection of her domination of our Tour. In thinking about my remarks this morning, I remembered an incident that took place earlier this year at the Safeway International in Phoenix, where I was sitting in the press room watching the opening of the ESPN telecast of that event. Roger Twibell had come on the air and said that Annika had earned $13 million in prize money up to that point in her career. And I sat there and I said, "Roger just said something wrong. There is no way that Annika has won $13 million in her career. I think that number is too high. He's just made a mistake."

Sure enough, I went back to the media guide, looked, and she had made just over $13 million in that point in the year. Maybe I should have kept better track of her prize money totals.

I read a statistic last week that she has won 37 golf tournaments since 2000, which is the most of any golfer on any tour in that time frame, and along with her seven victories this year, over $2 million. Next year at the Safeway International, they'll be saying she's over $15 million in prize money in her career—that just solidifies her status as one of the greatest golfers who has ever played the game. She continues to impress and demonstrate her excellence and her determination and her professionalism. We're a better organization because she's a part of it.

In addition to her performance, with her fourth consecutive and seventh overall Rolex Player of the Year, she joins fellow LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Famer Kathy Whitworth for this feat, which again is testament to her abilities and her contributions to the sport.

Also just starting her career is Shi Hyun Ahn, winning the 2004 Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award, in a tight race over Aree Song, another teenager on our Tour. You're going to see a lot of great things from both of those players for the foreseeable future.

The Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average is coming down to the wire this week with Grace Park and Lorena Ochoa vying for their first Vare Trophy honors. And certainly the LPGA majors this year provided a number of compelling and electric moments for the LPGA and our fans.

Clearly the finish at the Kraft Nabisco with Aree Song's eagle putt on 18 on Sunday, followed by Grace Park making birdie from about six feet to win her first major championship got the majors off on a wonderful note. Followed by Annika winning the McDonald's LPGA Championship for the second straight year and for her seventh career major.

And what I have been calling the feel-good tournament victory of the year, Meg Mallon and her memorable win at the US Women's Open conducted by the USGA on the 4th of July. With her family present for the win, and then following up that victory with another national open, the Canadian Women's Open the following week, then winning a third event this year in Toledo, which is somewhat close to her hometown, growing up in Detroit, Michigan, made it a wonderful summer for Meg.

Everywhere I went this year, everyone who talked to me, one of the first things out of their mouths was, "It's been great to watch Meg's successes this summer," and we certainly echo that.

Then finally the last major of the year, Karen Stupples in front of her hometown English crowd on Sunday doing something that I believe I'm accurate in saying has never been done in any professional golf competition, certainly not in any major championship, men's or women's, starting her final round with eagle, double eagle, and holding on to win a major championship in the Weetabix Women's British Open. She recorded her first career win earlier this year in Tucson. Four major winners from four different countries does reflect the global nature of the LPGA.

The other story line that has developed over the last year, as has been developing in previous years, is the depth and diversity and talent of the LPGA membership, which was clearly evident in the winner's circle this year. All of Mexico and the global golf community awaited Lorena Ochoa's first win, and she did one better by winning twice this year, and is now in the top three on the official money list coming into this year. That impact will be reflected in the schedule that I will discuss in a few minutes.

In addition to Lorena's first win this year, there was Karen Stupples, Moira Dunn, Jennifer Rosales, and Christina Kim, who were also first-time winners this year, and we had 18 different winners which, given the fact that you had Annika winning seven times, and Cristie Kerr and Meg Mallon winning three times each, the depth and breadth of talent in the LPGA is even more evident than ever before.

We are now three years into our five-year strategic business plan, and we are very pleased with our progress to date. The LPGA is well positioned for the future with clear goals and a clear path to remain the preeminent women's sports organization in the world. Our fan and sponsor demand for the LPGA remains strong. The LPGA has achieved significant growth in attendance and viewership since 2001, the year before we launched our new fans first approach and business plan.

Our attendance has remained steady in 2004. In fact, when you make apples-to-apples comparisons in terms of same market, same golf course, same community for our events, our attendance has grown. It's been when we moved golf courses or golf tournaments from one market to another where we may have seen some attendance declines. But overall our attendance has been steady for 2004 and we anticipate that steadiness to continue the growth in the future and throughout the rest of our five-year business plan.

Network viewership as far as television is concerned is up nearly 10% since 2001. And while our cable telecasts have been flat since 2001 in terms of ratings and viewership, we have had double-digit growth in viewership of our younger audience, up 11% in our male audience alone. What this means is we're trending a bit towards a younger audience in our telecasts, which is certainly something our sponsors are taking note of in their discussions with us.

LPGA.com continues positive growth in 2004 with fans coming to the site for competition coverage as well as player, celebrity and entertainment features, and we're going to continue to build that as our network and our fan outlet to tell stories about our players and our activities in ways that no other member of the media can.

Our new sponsors in 2005 on our schedule include MasterCard and Corona in Mexico, and SBS, our television partner in Korea, sponsoring our inaugural event in Hawaii in 2005, which I'll get to in a little bit on our schedule. Great brands joining forces with LPGA, another indication of our global reach by expanding into those marketplaces.

With respect to television, we're very pleased to be able to report that we have solidified our television relationships with The Golf Channel and ESPN for the foreseeable future. The multi-year extensions with both The Golf Channel and ESPN are again great signs of our strength in a very competitive world of sports entertainment.

We're also in the process of extending our relationship with SBS, our Korean TV partner, for coverage of all LPGA events in Korea, and when that is finalized, it will be a record-setting deal in terms of television rights. In fact, it will be the largest television rights in the history of the LPGA, which speaks volumes to the level of interest that the 21 Korean players who play our tour have generated in their home country of Korea.

Another contributing factor to our success is the international makeup of our tour. Currently there are 96 active tour members representing 24 countries outside the United States. These emerging stars are making names for themselves, not only in the United States in their performances on our Tour, but all over the world, which creates an enormous amount of opportunities for us in terms of television, sponsorship development and tournament opportunities.

In the past decade, we've seen a doubling of our international membership, which makes us more compelling to multi-national brands and global companies that want to associate with the LPGA and increase the demand for the LPGA among international television distributors. There is no question the LPGA's global diversity is resulting in an increased fan interest from consumers around the world.

The LPGA itself will continue to have a global appeal, not only with its diverse membership, from all parts of the world, but also with tournaments in so many different countries.

If you look at the field for the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament that will occur in a few weeks at our headquarters in Daytona Beach, there is a talent pool from both the United States and places as far-reaching as Colombia, Brazil, Italy, South Africa, Denmark and Mainland China.

All of this reflects that we are opening our arms to the best players in the world to come play the LPGA Tour, which will make us stronger going forward.

Continuing on the global front, we were very pleased earlier this year to host the first ever World Congress of Women's Golf. During that landmark event, major golfing bodies of golf, the LPGA, the Ladies European Tour, Japan LPGA, the Korean LPGA, the Australian Ladies Professional Golf Tours announced some significant initiatives, including a comprehensive women's world ranking that now has the support and commitment of all the leading women's golf organizations from around the world.

Since the World Congress, those organizations and the LPGA have continued to make progress on the establishment of these rankings. And I'm happy to say that we are planning to launch the women's world ranking for the 2006 season. We were hoping to be able to do it for 2005, but the consensus amongst all of the organizations is that we wanted to get it done right and have all the methodologies in place in a tested way before rolling it out, and we think the earliest that's going to happen now in 2006. But when it does come out, we're very pleased to have the overall support and commitment from all the leading women's golf organizations from around the world with this initiative.

So that is a look back, if you will, into some of the successes that we've been able to achieve in 2004, and in looking ahead to 2005, our LPGA Tour schedule.

With all the momentum created throughout the season, we are as excited as ever about the prospects of another vigorous year in 2005. We will provide you with a hard copy of the schedule after this press conference so I won't go over it line by line, but I'd like to give you a few highlights of the '05 schedule. We will be at all-time highs in total prize money, $45 million. The average official purse will increase six and a half percent from 2004, to $1.39 million, another record. Since '99, our official money has increased by almost $12 million, from $31.7 to $43.3 million, which is a 37 percent increase over that span while playing seven fewer official events.

Our schedule will include 34 events, including 22 full-field events, nine limited-field events, two unofficial money events and then The Solheim Cup, which will be staged in September at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis. The European Tour holds the Solheim Cup in its possession, and Nancy Lopez as captain of the US Solheim Cup team is determined to get the Solheim Cup back on US soil.

We will have two new events in Mexico and a return to Hawaii with the SBS Open at Turtle Bay. The $1 million event will be played at Turtle Bay resort on the Island of Oahu and is sponsored by SBS, our partner in Korea.

We will also have an event just outside of Mexico City, sponsored by MasterCard, and an event in Morelia, Mexico, sponsored by Corona.

Existing events on our schedule continue to support our players, as evidenced by 11 events that will increase their purses for 2005 from their 2004 purses, which is roughly a third of our overall schedule. And three of the LPGA's four major championships, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the McDonald's LPGA Championship and Weetabix Women's British Open each will have increased their purses by $200,00 to now offer $1.8 million in prize money each.

The US Women's Open, conducted by the USGA, offers the highest prize in women's golf at $3.1 million. We've been told the USGA will announce a 2005 -- if they have a purse increase in 2005, it will be announced in May, which I believe will be the media day for that event that will be played next year at Cherry Hills in Denver.

Just as in 2004, the major championships are primed to showcase compelling and electric moments on our schedule. These great events continue to improve more than just in purse increases. Three significant announcements have occurred with respect to our majors for 2005. With respect to the 2006 Kraft Nabisco Championship, it will now move off of the TPC weekend with respect to that telecast and with the scheduling, it will be a week later, the week after The Players Championship and a week before the Masters.

So I look forward to seeing all of you at the Kraft Nabisco, because many of you have attended The Players Championship during those weeks. For those of you who have come out to the Kraft Nabisco and seen that event, we look forward to having you back. For those of you who have missed it through the years, we're looking forward to showing you in 2006 why that event is the special event that it is.

The McDonald's LPGA Championship presented by Coca-Cola has moved to Bulle Rock Golf Club in Harve de Grace, Maryland. Bulle Rock is considered the top-ranked public golf course in the state of Maryland and has been rated by Golf Magazine and Golf Digest as one of the best public golf courses in the nation, and everyone associated with the LPGA Championship is looking forward to creating a new set of traditions at Bulle Rock.

The USGA this year has announced that sometime after 2010, Pebble Beach will host the US Women's Open, which we're very excited about. During the World Congress of Women's Golf held in New York, the Ladies Golf Union and Weetabix announced that the Weetabix Women's British Open will be played at St. Andrews in 2007.

Those are some very exciting developments with respect to our major championships, but some other developments outside of our majors, Safeway, the title sponsor of our events in Phoenix and Portland, will be raising their purses by $200,000, both of which offer a $1.4 million in prize money, and with respect to the Office Depot Championship that has been held in Southern California in the spring over the past several years, we are very excited to announce today that that event will be moving to the fall and will move to the Trump National Golf Course in Los Angeles, formerly known as Ocean Trails. That golf course is going to reopen in March of next year and we're very excited to have that event be played at a second Trump golf course on our schedule.

Mr. Trump and everybody here at Trump International have been wonderful hosts for us, and we're looking forward to providing the golf fans of Southern California a wonderful venue in Trump National.

With that, I'd like to express our appreciation to you all for covering this year's ADT Championship and hope you have a wonderful week doing so. With that, I'm more than happy to open it up to any questions that you may have regarding the schedule or any other subjects that might be on your mind.

Q.: How many holes at the Trump National event?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: It will be a 54-hole event over three days, over 18 holes of golf, 18 different holes of golf.

Q.: If you look out into the future, is there anything you can do to better space your majors? Just noticing that LPGA and the Women's Open are one after the other.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, I'd actually thought we had a pretty good space until you reminded me the fact we only have one week between the McDonald's and the US Women's Open. That's I think a function of the site for next year's US Women's Open was not as open to a 4th of July weekend as other sites have been in the recent past for that event.

So because of the dynamics of that local marketplace of how Denver celebrates the 4th of July by leaving town as opposed to staying there, they thought it would be better to move it a week earlier. What that did was crunch the time between the two events.

We're locked in I think for the foreseeable future into this situation, simply because of the television arrangements that are in place, especially in relation to what the PGA TOUR's TV arrangements are in '05 and '06. When the new deals come into place, there may be some movement that can be had in helping that situation.

Q.: Not knowing the weather in Havre de Grace, but can you move the McDonald's to late May or early June?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, one of the reasons we moved it to June in the past was that when we had it in May in Delaware, we had some weather challenges. Aberdeen, Maryland, which is a much easier name to pronounce, which is the location around Bulle Rock, is only about 40 miles from Wilmington. Moving it earlier in the year may present the same kind of weather problems for that event in that marketplace as it had been in Wilmington. So we're going to look at that.

But I think we're in that situation through probably '06 because of the existing television agreements that are pretty much tying our hands.

Q.: I'm assuming you're still going to have a significant off-season break.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Shorter off-season break.

Q.: Shorter, okay. Just curious how you feel having the off-season break has gone and if you feel that that's something that is going to continue for the foreseeable future?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, we're going to start -- our first event on our schedule next year will be unofficial money, the World Cup in South Africa, that will take place the second week in February, involving 20 two-person teams from around the world. So for those players participating in that event, our season starts there. We'll take a week off after that and then start our year the last week of February in Hawaii with the SBS Open at Turtle Bay. And then move from there to Mexico with the MasterCard Championship at Bosque Real.

So that is a full two weeks earlier than we started in 2004, but it still involves a January where we're completely off -- where we are in an off-season mode.

And I think if you talk to -- it depends on who you talk to as to how the players feel about it. I know many of the top players do look forward to the break simply because they are playing through pretty much the end of November on their schedules. Players below the top 60, if you will, are looking at a three-month break, and they probably are as anxious as anybody to get back.

But I still feel that having a time off in January is the right thing for this organization simply because there doesn't seem to be a beginning or an end to the golf seasons in other contexts. This at least provides us with the opportunity to take a breather and to then present, as is our brand promise, the very best of women's professional golf on as consistent a basis as we can.

For the second year in a row we've averaged seven of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 and 23 of the top 30 at our events throughout the year. I think a large reason for that is the break that we have at the beginning of the year. And when we do that, when we have those quality fields presented to our fans, it makes our sponsorship situation a much better one.

Q.: How has Lorena's success affected having a tournament in Mexico?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I would say it's probably Exhibit A in the reasons why we're in Mexico. Much like you can point to our successes in Korea being in large part attributed to Se Ri Pak's pioneering of success from that country on our tour, you would have to point to Lorena's success in winning two times this year and creating a level of excitement in her home country of Mexico for us to bring two events to that marketplace in 2005.

I went down to Mexico City for the press conference at Bosque Real and it was a remarkable experience in terms of the level of media attention that was generated as a result of that announcement, and the amounts of media representatives that were there covering that press conference.

And I think if the attention that the media gave to the event is any indication of the success of the event, we'll be very pleased. It was very impressive.

Q.: Does it annoy you at all if you're a fan of the LPGA Tour, on some weekends you go to watch coverage of your tournament, you have to wait till the evening for a tape delay while The Golf Channel shows the minor league Nationwide Tour live?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, I'm not quite sure how many times that's happened in the past year. I'm not sure that there haven't been occasions in which the LPGA has been shown live and the Nationwide has been shown on tape, or the Champions Tour has been shown on tape.

But I think on the occasions in which that has happened, it's been dictated in large part because of time zone issues that are there, and we also have to understand that there are contractual commitments that The Golf Channel has with other golf tours. If a Nationwide event is being played on the East Coast and an LPGA event is being played on the West Coast, the best viewing opportunity if our fans may very well be in a tape-delayed situation in prime time because of the time differences that are involved.

Having said that, I would tell you that our initial television viewership numbers for The Golf Channel this year have dramatically improved over last year. In some cases we are in healthy double-digit percentage increases over last year and in some cases you've seen a doubling of our ratings on The Golf Channel. In many of those situations, those reasons have been because they're being shown in prime time when there's a larger viewing audience than perhaps Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

So from our perspective, we'd love to show live golf, but we also know the realities of time zone differences. And even when we can't show live golf, we do it on a tape delay, our viewership numbers have increased, which we see as a positive.

Q.: Have you seen the viewership numbers for the Nationwide?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: They haven't shared those numbers with me. I'm not sure they would if I asked. Those are numbers specific to the Nationwide. Much as I hope that they wouldn't necessarily give out willy-nilly our ratings numbers to the Champions Tour or the PGA TOUR.

Q.: How many full-field events did you have this year?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: 24.

Q.: Less was more for you guys. Are you comfortable with that number now, the big picture?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, there will be five events that were on our 2004 schedule that will not be on our schedule that we released for 2005. That follows a year in which in 2004 every single event we had our schedule came back from 2003 and we added a full-field event in Nashville.

We have two less in '05 than we had in '04. We'll have one less that we had in '05 that we had in '03. We think that's a transitional situation, not a systemic issue going forward. I anticipate us having some more full-field events in 2006 than we have in 2005.

What the right mix of events is, that's something we're always evaluating and something we're always looking at. With the number of events that we had this year, 24 full-field events, we set records for the number of players who earned $100,000 in prize money, $200,000, 300, 400, 500. If Karen Stupples has a good week this week, we'll set records for players who have made a million dollars in prize money.

The economic opportunities in an environment where since '99 our official money has raised 37% since '99, the fact that our sponsors are paying for the value we're delivering to them in terms of quality of fields and in terms of quality of competition, we feel that while we are always looking at the mix and the quality of our events, we are also mindful of our obligations to our sponsors as to how many events our players can realistically support.

Q.: A few questions about the international growth. With the SBS deal, how many events do they televise?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Pretty much every event that's televised in the United States. There may be one or two, because of other pre-existing deals in Korea. I'm not sure the Samsung, for example, is on SBS because that's controlled or part of another agreement. But every other event, all of our The Golf Channel events and all of our ESPN events, and for the most part all of our broadcast network events are telecast by SBS.

Q.: You said it was a record deal. Is that the largest television contract you've ever had with any entity?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Largest rights fee situation, yes.

Q.: Your international growth. Is there a way to quantify what it's meant to the financial stability of the organization versus 10 years ago? Do you take in 25% more in income? Is there any way to say how much healthier it's made you?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Our international television revenues have grown 10 fold since 1996. So that reflects -- many of you will say that information is useless unless we know what it started as and ended as. I can tell you from a revenue perspective, any revenue source within our budget, no other revenue source has increased 10 fold like our international television distribution has.

It has made a remarkable impact on the financial stability and financial success of the organization. We're very gratified for the demand that our product has in countries like Korea. And now Mexico is evolving as another marketplace where we're seeing that take place. We've always done well in Australia. We've always done well in the UK. But now we're seeing a little bit more up-tick in terms of our television product being distributed to a more diverse set of countries.

Q.: Do you find sponsors or potential sponsors more interested in smaller elite fields? That's obviously a challenge for you because you run a tour for 100 players, not just 30. Can you talk about that situation a bit?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Yeah. We have -- we've had a number of situations where I would say the calls that go out from our office are calls that are centered around full-field events. I would say the calls that into our office in terms of prospective interest in LPGA events, are more likely to be conversations about something unique, something different, something limited, smaller number of players, higher impact. And the appropriate mix of full-field to limited-field is something we're looking at.

But in terms of our schedule, the percentage of full-field events on our schedule, 65 percent is the same number of full-field events on the PGA Tour schedule. Our number of limited-field events are about the same percentage as the limited-field events you see on the PGA Tour, which is about 25 to 27 percent.

So from that perspective, we are consistent with the mix or portfolio of the nature of events. They have more events than we do. They're 48 plus. We're at 34. But interestingly enough, if you look back over the last 12 years, and I'd be happy to give you the statistics on this, if you look at the amount of money that has been paid for in terms of official money on our schedule with varying degrees of numbers of events and varying degrees of the mix of limited and full-field events, you'll see that the Top 30 has pretty much made the same percentage of that overall percentage -- overall total purse, and the top 90 has made the same percentage, roughly 80 percent. Top 90 players in our tour make roughly 80% of what the official money is. That number stayed within one or two percentage points ever since 1991.

What that tells me is that performance still matters, but at the end of the day, when you have $16 million in 1991 in official money, and today double that number in official money, and the percentages are the same, our players up and down the Money List are making considerably more money than they did ten, five, even three years ago.

But it's something that we have always are mindful of because we want to create as many economic opportunities for as many members as we can, but it's also a reflection of what the marketplace is looking at. We have turned down limited-field events. We turned down one this year actually that would have provided economic opportunities for 24 of our members. We turned it down for 2005 because we didn't think it fit the right mix and portfolio of our schedule.

Q.: It looks like if a player happens not to qualify for Evian and Weetabix, there's a potential for her to have a full month off in the middle of the summer. Are you comfortable with that?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, I think there's also a number of teams that go into spring training every year that won't make the playoffs either. I think that that's something that has to be in a player's mindset, they have to be mindful of what is there.

Those two events represent our biggest purses. The Open is a situation where everybody can qualify. And at the beginning of the year, when we tee it up at the SBS Open, every single player on our schedule will be at the same spot on the Money List, and they all have the opportunity to try to qualify for Evian.

But, yeah, the mix in that time frame is where the loss of some of our full-field events this year will impact the playing opportunities in that time frame for our players.

Q.: When you're looking at growing the schedule, how mindful are you of the wear and tear that adding tournaments, like if you even played in January, you would be perhaps increasing the risk of injury for these women to be playing more weeks? Tennis is really struggling with that right now, for example.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Yeah, we're -- in an ideal world, I've heard this quite a bit. In an ideal world by our players and by our sponsors who want quality fields, we play four or five weeks, take a week off, play four or five weeks, take a week off. You can't necessarily do that in the less than perfect world that we live in today.

We'll have two weeks off after the Kraft Nabisco on our schedule. We'll have two weeks off in August of this year. This year we took the PGA Championship week off. We'll have another week off prior to that this year. We think those breaks will help the wear and tear on our players.

Knowing that there are a number of situations that individual players, it's not a record number of medical extensions that we've had, but we've had a substantial amount of medical extensions requested for their status to be continued because of medical reasons.

Even this week— Wendy Doolan has struggled with some health issues throughout the year [note: she withdrew from ADT]. That's something we're always mindful of. In looking at the number of events we've had on our schedule, there were 33. I think the most anybody has played is somewhere in the 27 or 28. But most players, if you look down our Money List and see how many events they've played, most players will play somewhere in the area of 22 to 23 events out of the a potential 33. So they're building those types of breaks into their schedules themselves.

Q.: The TBA in July, any insight on that? Is that definitely going to be a tournament that's going to be filled?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Yeah, we wouldn't have put the $2 million prize money on there if we didn't think it would be filled. Unfortunately, we are not able to really talk at this time about the sponsor or the format or the location of that event. But we are looking forward to that purse, and the day in the next couple of weeks when we can talk more freely about the sponsor and the format and the location.

But the TBA there is what it is, to be announced. But we wanted that week to be reflective of the $2 million purse because it does positively impact our total prize money story for next year at $45 million. We'll have more to say about that in a couple weeks.

Q.: Is it going to affect him at all, is what he was trying to ask?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, we would love to see Cliff [Bond, New York Times] at any LPGA event that he would choose to attend. We'll have more to say about that in a few weeks.

Q.: What is the economic and otherwise status down in Australia? Given kind of the global nature the tour has taken on, would it be at all possible if things recovered down there that you could put the Aussie Open and Ladies Masters, make that part of the official schedule starting in January?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: They're as tied - probably more so - than us as to what the television schedule is on the men's Australian tour. So where those two events have traditionally been placed on their schedule in February has been a direct correlation between what's available for TV.

The irony, as I understand it, is that those two events, the Australian Open and the Australian Ladies Masters, have outrated the men's Australian events by a considerable degree, an impressive degree, a degree to which would surprise many of you. I know it surprised me.

But yet in Australia, they have to buy their way on and pay for full production, even though they outrate men's events where rights fees are paid and production is delivered by the networks.

The situation in Australia has gotten a little bit -- it's my understanding that the Australian Women's Open is in doubt to even be played last year. The Australian Ladies Masters, because of that television situation that I've described to you, is going to be up against the SBS Open, our first event in Hawaii next year, because that's the only week they can play that event. So that's unfortunate.

So there will be some players, like Rachel Teske or Karrie Webb and four LPGA players who we give conflicting event releases to, they'll have to make choices as to which event they want to play in. The Australians will in all likelihood want to support their home tour, which we certainly respect.

But your question is will the economy be in such a degree of strength that we could add it to our schedule? We had those discussions this past year when I went down to Australia and met with the tournament organizers. And while there was enthusiasm and an eagerness to try to make that work, we weren't able to do that this year. I don't see with the dollar valuation and the Australian dollar situation being what it is, I don't see that happening for the foreseeable future.

Q.: Do you have anything now to report on Florida events?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Yeah, we will continue, as we have in the past, to look at markets where we think that there are sustainable, long-lasting events. We've had a couple more discussions this year than we've had in previous years. I think we've moved the pebble up the hill, so to speak, with respect to those discussions, but nothing that is in any kind of definitive form certainly for 2005. But we'll continue to have those discussions in those markets where we've had those past conversations. Hopefully we can perhaps do that in '06 or later.

Q.: What is the policy on transsexuals playing the Tour?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: The rules are currently set up in such a way that we require, as does the USGA for its female tournaments, to be female at birth, which would preclude transgender from playing on our tour.

The International Olympic Committee this year has announced a new policy whereby, provided an individual has gone through hormone replacement therapy over a period of time, that would suggest that the testosterone or hormonal influence on strength and physical conditioning would be less in a transgender situation, that they will now be allowed to play in the Olympics in their new transgender roles.

With that, a number of golf organizations around the world have looked at it. I know the LET has announced that they are going to comport with the IOC's regulations. Mianne Bagger, who is a transsexual, qualified for the LAT for next year, which means that there is a possibility that she could compete in the Evian Masters if she qualifies based on her performance on the LET and the Weetabix Women's British Open and ostensibly the Solheim Cup.

Our regulations as far as qualification from our tour currently stand at female at birth. Because of the IOC and because of some of the other not only golf organizations but what other state laws in the United States are now moving towards, that's a subject that we're going to look at going forward and may very well take similar action. But we have to do an educational process with the membership in terms of what the rationale would be for changing that constitutional provision of female at birth.

I never thought I'd be talking about that either, but thank you for asking.

It's always good to see all of you. Thank you very much for being here.