JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer
PITTSFORD, N.Y. (AP) — Cristie Kerr knows the LPGA Championship is going to feel different, not only because it’s staged at a new golf course.
The LPGA Tour announced in May that the tournament was getting a new name, two big partners, a lot more exposure and a change in venue.
Hello KPMG. Goodbye Wegmans Food Markets, and goodbye to the greater Rochester area in upstate New York, a staunch supporter of women’s golf since the 1970s.
Rest assured a few tears will be shed.
“I’m definitely sad if it is (the last time),” said Kerr, who won the 2010 LPGA Championship at Locust Hill Country Club by a record-breaking 12-stroke margin. “They knew they weren’t going to get major status forever. All the players on the tour were hoping they would remain. It’s one of the best tournaments on tour, even if they weren’t a major. It’s up to them, but that would be really sad.”
Next year’s tournament will be called the Women’s PGA Championship. It will be the first women’s major run by the PGA of America and will staged that season at Westchester Country Club in the northern suburbs of New York City. It will be televised on NBC during the weekend, only the second event on the schedule on network television.
Wegmans has been a sponsor of the LPGA’s Rochester stop for more than three decades and became title sponsor of the regular tournament in 1997 when the event needed one to survive. In 2009, when the LPGA lost the title sponsor for the LPGA Championship, one of its majors, Wegmans brought the championship to Rochester to replace the area’s regular event.
But higher purses and other factors will effectively double the cost for title sponsorship, too much for the supermarket chain to consider. The purse will increase in 2015 to $3.5 million, up from $2.25 million this year.
The tour had events at Locust Hill for 37 years. The final LPGA Championship begins Thursday at nearby Monroe Golf Club. The plan is to move it around the country, with most of the events in the New York City area.
“The ball’s in our ballpark,” LPGA Tour Commissioner Michael Whan said. “We just have to find the next hero.”
A return to Rochester in the future is something both sides seem to want.
“It would be strange for me to say we’re not going to be back in Rochester long-term,” Whan said. “I’ve seen it happen. Rochester has just become part of our fabric. This is where we belong. You almost took it for granted that we’d be in Rochester every year.
“We need to find somebody who says Rochester is important to us, so that we can make it important to them.”
Inbee Park won last year in dramatic fashion at Locust Hill, with players having to play 36 holes on Sunday because of a first-round postponement due to rain. Park nearly squandered a one-shot lead with a final-round 75 that included bogeys on three of her last five holes. But when Catriona Matthew forced a playoff with a final-round 68, Park rallied with a 20-foot birdie on the third playoff hole to win her second straight major.
U.S. players have won the first three majors this year: Lexi Thompson took the Kraft Nabisco Championship; Michelle Wie won the U.S. Women’s Open; and Mo Martin surged to victory in the final round at the Women’s British Open. The last time the first three majors in the LPGA were won by American players was in 1999, and not since 1992 have Americans won them all.
Wie already is out of contention for this one. She’ll miss the LPGA Championship because of an injury to her right index finger.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
