The LPGA Tour noticed a shakeup in management this week when Mollie Marcoux Samaan introduced she can be stepping down as commissioner subsequent month, and Liz Moore can be taking up within the interim.
Marcoux Samaan has served because the tour commissioner since Could 2021 and launched document prize cash to the group, however confronted criticism for the tour not seeing a rise in recognition throughout an increase in girls’s sports activities. Moore has been the chief authorized and know-how officer.
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LPGA emblem throughout the second spherical of the North Texas LPGA Shootout performed at Las Colinas Nation Membership in Irving, Texas. (Ray Carlin/Icon SMI/Corbis/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
The LPGA Tour almost had a significant controversy on its fingers when it got here to trans inclusion in girls’s sports activities. Hailey Davidson, a transgender girls’s golfer, participated in Q College in hopes of buying an LPGA Tour card. Davidson had been faraway from the NXXT Tour resulting from its coverage to ban transgender athletes from competing in opposition to the gender they establish as.
Two skilled girls’s golfers and one retired professional hoped the LPGA Tour would take initiative and enact a coverage to stop transgender athletes from competing in opposition to organic females on the tour.
“My hope is the following LPGA commissioner has the braveness and boldness to do what’s greatest for not solely its present members however the way forward for girls’s golf by way of emphasizing equity by protecting girls’s golf feminine!” professional golfer Lauren Miller, who can also be an envoy for the Unbiased Girls’s Discussion board, stated Wednesday in a information launch.
Professional golfer Hannah Arnold hoped that the group would get management that’s centered on the participant.
GOLFER WHO COMPETED AGAINST TRANS HAILEY DAVIDSON ‘PRAYING’ FOR LPGA GENDER RULE CHANGES
Transgender golfer Hailey Davidson takes care of a shot at pre-qualifying stage of the LPGA Q-Collection. (Riley Gaines/X)
“We want management who emphasizes participant first and tour second,” Arnold, who can also be an IWF ambassador, stated in a information launch. “Naturally it’s the women skilled golf tour for a purpose. It’s our accountability to carry management accountable to the gamers. I’m hoping the tour leads with a participant first mentality going ahead.”
Amy Olson, an IWF ambassador who just lately retired from the LPGA, applauded Marcoux Samaan for rising pay on the tour, however the subsequent chief wanted to ensure what the “L” in LPGA stood for.
“Mollie has been a fierce advocate for rising pay for LPGA gamers. Probably the most essential points the following chief might want to present readability on is what the L’ in LPGA means,” Olson added.
Every of the golfers had been amongst those that signed a letter to the LPGA Tour demanding the group acknowledge the male benefit in relation to golf between the 2 genders.
The letter additionally requested that the LPGA Tour “set up and implement the fitting of feminine skilled golfers to take part in girls’s golf primarily based on sex-eligibility have to be restricted to members of the feminine intercourse.”
The LPGA Tour has a gender coverage. It permits transgender golfers to take part so long as sex-reassignment surgical procedure is finished after puberty and hormone remedy necessities have been met.
LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan speaks to the gallery after the ultimate spherical of the LPGA Ford Championship golf match on Sunday, March 31, 2024 in Gilbert, Arizona. (AP Picture/Ross D. Franklin, File)
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Golfweek reported it obtained a memo from Marcoux Samaan in August, which stated the LPGA Tour and Epson Tour will conclude a assessment of its gender coverage by the tip of the yr, when modifications, if any, can be applied earlier than the beginning of subsequent season.
Fox Information’ Scott Thompson contributed to this report.
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