Mollie Marcoux Samaan is stepping down as LPGA commissioner.
The LPGA introduced the information on Monday morning, simply over every week after the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship in Naples, Florida.
Marcoux Samaan’s final day might be Jan. 9, 2025.
“I thank Chairman John Veihmeyer and the remainder of the LPGA Board for trusting me to function the ninth Commissioner of the LPGA,” Marcoux Samaan mentioned. “On this function, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside a exceptional neighborhood of athletes, lecturers, companions, event operators, business colleagues, media, followers, volunteers, and workers who share a deep dedication to rising the LPGA and utilizing the group’s distinctive platform to empower and advance girls and women. I’m happy with the unprecedented progress the LPGA has loved since I started my tenure. The technique we now have constructed for progress and affect together with the infrastructure we now have added to capitalize on the super alternative forward will serve the LPGA effectively within the coming a long time. With the LPGA positioned for continued progress, it’s time for me to have extra time to cheer on our three superb youngsters as they stay their desires whereas I proceed to pursue my ardour for constructing leaders, uniting communities and creating worth by sports activities, notably girls’s sports activities.”
Liz Moore, the LPGA’s chief authorized and know-how officer, has been named interim commissioner whereas a world search takes place for a everlasting alternative.
Marcoux Samaan, who had beforehand served as Princeton’s athletics director, was employed because the tour’s ninth commissioner in Might 2021, changing Mike Whan, who left for the USGA after 11 years main the LPGA.
Below Samaan, the LPGA’s purses elevated by over 90%, and gamers will compete for a file $131 million in prize cash subsequent 12 months. Since 2021, common earnings for top-100 gamers have doubled, rising to only over $1 million. Additionally, Marcoux Samaan oversaw the implementation of missed-cut stipends, home journey stipends, psychological well being and bodily efficiency sources, and fully-subsidized healthcare insurance coverage, in accordance with the LPGA, which additionally touted file fan engagement and file fundraising, although the tour didn’t present any knowledge.
Her contract was presupposed to run by Summer time 2026.
“On behalf of the LPGA board, I wish to categorical our honest gratitude to Mollie for her distinctive dedication and keenness in advancing the Affiliation’s attain and affect,” Veihmeyer mentioned. “Since becoming a member of the LPGA in 2021, Mollie has been instrumental in solidifying our place as the worldwide chief in girls’s skilled golf, realizing file progress in participant earnings and fan engagement. Mollie has been a steadfast advocate for fairness within the sport and has labored tirelessly to develop alternatives for ladies and women by the sport. I’m assured that the LPGA is well-positioned for continued success as we construct on the expansion trajectory of the previous three and a half years of Mollie’s management. We deeply admire the lasting affect of Mollie’s many contributions.”
However Marcoux Samaan additionally confronted loads of scrutiny throughout her tenure.
Terry Duffy, CEO and chairman of CME Group, which sponsors the LPGA’s $11 million season finale, lately instructed Golfweek of Samaan, “I don’t know the way you could possibly not give A++ to the place the tour is at as we speak below her management.” However simply two years in the past, Duffy blasted Marcoux Samaan and LPGA management after no gamers confirmed up – regardless of 11 RSVPs – to an early-week dinner for sponsors forward of the CME Group Tour Championship.
“They higher get their act collectively,” Duffy mentioned in a Golfweek story in 2022, “as a result of they’re going to lose folks like me over stuff like this.”
Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols, the tour’s preeminent beat reporter, wrote a critique of Marcoux Samaan final month, and laid out a number of management considerations, together with the shortage of transparency with points such because the LPGA’s gender coverage and dealings with Golf Saudi, lack of Cognizant as a sponsor and different staple occasions, debacles at this 12 months’s Solheim Cup (fan transportation) and final 12 months’s Event of Champions (locker room) and, as Nichols characterised, Marcoux Samaan’s total lack of relationship-building abilities. Nichols’ essential argument was that the LPGA, below Marcoux Samaan’s lead, had did not capitalize on the rise of ladies’s sports activities, a growth spearheaded by WNBA participant – and avid golfer – Caitlin Clark.
“How a lot alternative is being left on the desk?” Nichols wrote. “It’s a query that may’t be escaped.”
Now, it’s as much as somebody aside from Marcoux Samaan to reply that query.
Golf Channel’s Tom Abbott, talking on “Golf As we speak,” mentioned he wasn’t stunned by the information, although he sensed “extra positivity” round Marcoux Samaan eventually month’s Rolex LPGA Awards banquet and thought perhaps she’d overcome among the current “chatter.”
“I feel it’s a disgrace if these moments turn out to be her legacy,” Abbott mentioned. “Among the little issues that weren’t taken care of clearly grew to become a lot greater points, however they weren’t straight associated to Mollie Marcoux Samaan. … However on the finish of the day, it does fall on her shoulders, and it’s folks not taking good care of the little particulars, and that actually makes a giant distinction.
”… I hope that her legacy is the rise in purses and the amount of cash that gamers are taking part in for.”
Requested in regards to the largest problem for the subsequent commish, Abbott mentioned it won’t solely be navigating no matter occurs on the boys’s facet with Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund and its future involvement within the recreation, but in addition strengthening relationships with sponsors, discovering new sponsors and “retaining the longevity of occasions.”
“It’s not a straightforward place, and discovering the proper one that desires to enter that surroundings and tackle that problem, I don’t assume it’s a straightforward job,” Abbott mentioned. “This isn’t a job the place you get large inventory choices and bonuses and grants; that isn’t the case for the LPGA. … It’s good to discover someone who is actually passionate in regards to the recreation, who actually is aware of lots of people throughout the recreation of golf and may make these connections, and may cope with all of the components.”
Added Golf Channel’s Paige Mackenzie, who performed on the LPGA: “There was a breakdown in communication in precisely what her imaginative and prescient was and the way she noticed progress occurring. … Shifting ahead, for me, what I’d love to listen to from the subsequent chief of the LPGA is explaining why the LPGA has worth and the way it can profit all of the companions concerned.”
