In November 2007, Cristie Kerr, Natalie Gulbis and Morgan Pressel stood on the 18th green of Reflection Bay Golf Course in Las Vegas and
celebrated a victory for the LPGA Tour. They were young, bright, good-looking women who had just taken it to the boys of the PGA and Champions Tours in an unofficial, offseason charity event known as the Wendy’s Three-Tour Challenge. If these were the faces that were to carry the torch of women’s golf as Annika Sorenstam settled into retirement and motherhood, well then, things were looking up. Hold that thought, as the past two years have seen a complete upheaval in the women’s game. On July 13, LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens resigned after it was made public during the U.S. Women’s Open that the players had banded together and called for her head. The reasoning was nothing personal, just that in the last two years, the LPGA had lost of seven tournaments. That’s more than a quarter of the tour’s yearly schedule. “I was one of the players involved in the initial meetings and it’s hard,” Gulbis said. “I really liked Carolyn personally. I respected her. It’s just that we were losing tournaments and something had to change.”
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