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CANADIAN PACIFIC WOMEN'S OPENAugust 19, 2015Mike WhanCoquitlam, British Columbia, Canada Q. I wonder if you could walk us through the decision, and if any of it has caused the LPGA to rethink your invitations at all or are you comfortable with the policy? MIKE WHAN: Very comfortable with the policy. I think what a lot of fans don't understand, because I would get emails and texts and tweets and why aren't you out there handing her a card? We don't have a system by which I say in April, "You know what? She should be a member." So essentially she has to petition under 18, and she petitioned me three times. She petitioned last summer or fall, I can't remember when it was, to go to Q school. That's the one I denied. She petitioned in the summer to be a member of Symetra, which I approved, and she petitioned again this last time. So I've really only had three situations where I'm asked to make a decision. Because when you're under 18, you trigger that as opposed to I trigger that. No, I think everyone, I'm sure every Canadian will disagree, but when I said no the last time, I looked at her record, especially playing LPGA events, and I know she had a T-10 I think in the U.S. Women's Open, but other than that, it was really 24 or higher, and it didn't seem like a player who wasn't going to be able to find quality competition outside of us. I usually look and say is the only way for this player at this age to get competition at our level, and I didn't feel that then. And I would tell you that her resume today versus her resume a year ago is a hundred percent different. As I told her on the phone, and 100% her. She went out and earned it the old fashioned way and proved that she belonged. So, yeah, generally speaking, I mean, I probably of the percentages of the petitions I get, I probably turn down 98% of them if I had to do the history. Q. How many do you get? MIKE WHAN: I get plenty of petitions from all over the world and with all different resumes. You know about Brooke's, but I get them from China and Australia and the U.S., and everywhere else. Q. So she did formally petition you again this week? MIKE WHAN: She petitioned Monday night. If she wanted to be a member next year, as I explained to her father and her agent, she would not have had to petition. She could have, but we could have announced it and gotten it behind us, which I suggested I was comfortable with too. But if she wanted to be a member today starting at this tournament, she would have had to petition for that because she was still under age. Q. Can you just go with the philosophy behind it? Because I think it's solid thinking. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so maybe just go into it. MIKE WHAN: Philosophy on the petition today? Q. No, on the age limitation. MIKE WHAN: What's different about the LPGA and I think a lot of people don't think about it is, A, we play all over the world, so you're landing in Bangkok second event of the year, you're landing in Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, you're obviously landing all over North America as well, we're landing in Mexico City. That's different. I don't know if you have kids, but think about your 15, 16, 17-year-old. There is a lot of interaction with older people, a lot of alcohol at Pro-Am parties, that kind of stuff. And a lot of that is what it takes to be a member. I always tell players, today, you have to be a host. If you're a good host, then you can play for big money on Thursday. But part of being an LPGA member is what you're doing outside of Thursday to Sunday, and every LPGA player knows that. There is a pretty significant demand on your time. So in general we'd say we'd rather not have to have people face that too early. The other thing I'm trying to avoid is I don't want people's greatest golf experience to be between the ages of 12 and of 16 and totally burn out. So I want to make sure they're playing at age-specific and quality-specific ranks. So like I said, there are a lot of people all over the world that said they're ready for the LPGA right now, I'm not saying a I'm a hundred percent right in all my yeses and nos, but I have to look at the resume, the maturity, the team that's built around them and say, one, are they ready, and two, is this the only place they could really go to continue to build their playing skills and resume? Q. Wanted to ask you about Inbee Park and specifically the grand slam. You faced a bit of criticism in that calling it a career grand slam and then there is a Super Slam. MIKE WHAN: Right. Here's the simple thing for me. As I always tell people, it's not like we're giving a trophy or check or some sort of entrance into the World Golf Hall of Fame as a result of what we're labelling this. So before we decide this thing is so mysterious, and Mike just can't designate it to somebody, all we're trying to do is label performance. We're trying to come up with a label that captures somebody's performance. My challenge is this, and I've said this a million times on TV: If Lorena Ochoa wins four majors in 2008, everybody in the world calls her a Grand Slam winner. Everybody, nobody questions it. So now jump to 2016 and we have five majors, and Inbee Park goes and wins five. I think to call that the same thing we called Lorena's event in 2008 when she won them all is just inaccurate. It's not whether I like the titles or not. And I think if you believe that, which is I don't think you could call even Lorena, if she had won them all in '08, I'd say winning five is a little better. So if all we're trying to do is label performance, I don't want to create something where you say Inbee Park is a career Grand Slam winner and she has to have five for that, and we call a Jordan Spieth a career Grand Slam winner which is four, we're not giving labels to similar performance. I'm not trying to make Grand Slam easier. I'm just saying 99 out of 100 people say Inbee won the Grand Slam, oh, she won four. So if that's what four means, let's leave that as four and we need a different designation for five. I'm not trying to create a new title that the world has to latch on to. My point is I'm not going to call five the same thing I called four two years ago. Because, again, it's not a trophy, it's not a check. It's just a label for performance. So for us we added five and an incremental opportunity in both a year and a season. We needed the label to go with that. We created Super Slam just as another name. So when you say grand, it means something, when you say super, it means something. I think if you don't do that, we at the LPGA and the keepers of history have a bigger problem. I get how some people like it to be all of, but Babe Zaharias won three majors in a season there were only three majors, and nobody publishes her as a Grand Slam winner, but she won them all. But when you see the Golf Channel list Grand Slam winners, they don't show Bobby Jones, Babe Zaharias, Sandra Palmer who only had two. They show Bobby Jones, and I get that. So rather than trying to fight that, I'm just saying let's leave that as it is and make sure we have a separate designation for five. I'm not saying five is better or worse; it's just different. Q. I've got a couple questions about the Olympics. The easy one is you must be so excited about the impact it could make on the women's game? MIKE WHAN: Yeah, it's funny. When I took this job, I really expected the Olympic impact to be the week of the Olympics and following. Which has been obvious to me in the last five years is the Olympic impact has already happened. What happened with the Olympics and Canada is a great example by the way, a lot of countries -- and the U.S. less so, I think -- but a lot of countries around the world really care for what they call podium sports. Sports that are going to put a country on a podium. A lot of governments will financially back podium-winning sports, and I see it all around the world. Every country we go to. When golf became a podium sport, a lot of countries started investing in the future of the game. Golf never had that in the past. They didn't have golf schools and great coaches and clinics and built driving ranges, and that's all happening all over the world. So I'm still excited about what might happen post-Olympics, but I think if nothing happens post-Olympics, the impact of golf has been seen worldwide where just governments and organizations are building golf opportunities for young women that didn't exist five years ago. Q. How close are you guys monitoring the site in Rio? Some controversy over it. Are you involved in that at all? MIKE WHAN: Yeah, yeah, I'm a member of what's called the IGF which is the International Golf Federation, and that is the board that oversees the golf in the Olympics. So probably quarterly I'd say we have somebody in Rio. But we did. We went through kind of an interesting period there, but we're kind of past that now. We're really just in growing season. We're going to have an Olympic test event in the spring and we'll be playing in the summer. So, yeah, the course is done, and literally just been growing. We're waiting for it to get warm again in Rio and we'll just have a growing season. Q. The site itself is spectacular? MIKE WHAN: Yeah, and in a perfect world if you could say, Where would you want to play? We'd say let's play close to the village and see the city, let's bring the water and all those things are happening. Q. Wanted to ask you about the South Korean players on the Tour. Obviously, a lot of them are very, very good. How important has it been to the Tour -- I've been impressed both three years ago and this year with the ones I've interacted with have made a real conscious effort to improve their English, are happy to do interviews and all those kind of things. I know there was a time when some people thought that the fact that Koreans were dominating was a bad thing, but it seems to me it's very positive thinking. MIKE WHAN: It's funny. I was doing an interview on ESPN a couple years ago and somebody said if I said LPGA in a bar, what would be the stereotypes that people would say back? I said, It's funny. For me, I think sports always lagged reality by about five years. In other words, if you say NBA to me, I think players coaching and choking their coach and thugs and tattoos. And really think about Kevin Garnett, you think about -- if you jump to today and LeBron and everybody, they're not like that at all. They're great role models. But I'm stuck five or six years ago because I'm not following them much. You say baseball, I'm thinking associate a's bat breaking and cork coming out of it and pitchers trying to cheat, but I think they've moved on. If you say LPGA to people, a bunch of players from overseas I can't pronounce their name and they don't speak English. And I tell people that's a great scenario of the LPGA about seven years ago. We were going global, we weren't good at it yet. We had players from all over the world, and the difference is we're just seven years later. We had a language company travel with us for five years and we had 50 to 60 players at any one time learning language at the golf course. Because our players, the best time to get these guys to learn things is when they have a late Pro-Am, rain delay, because they don't know how to relax. They want to be doing something all the time. What's really happened is today, if that's your stereotype, and there are still fans that have that stereotype, and you come out to a Pro-Am today, we'll change your stereotype in ten minutes. I played today with Inbee in my Pro-Am, and a fan came up to me and said, "Does she speak English?" And I said, "Better than me." She really does, you know. But there was a time when I know she was traveling with an interpreter and learning and everything else. So I always think it's funny. I believe that when we started getting engaged and everybody learning the language, I think more players did it because it even helped their game. Imagine if you don't speak the language and you're on 16th tee and you're winning and you know you have to do a press conference in three holes, you are not focused on 16, 17, and 18, right? So, yeah, I think the stereotype that sometimes comes with the Tour is correct. It's just dated. It's just a different ear a. Like I said, I always say to our players and our fans, don't get stressed out about that. Every sport deals with it. If you say hockey to me I'm still a few years ago as opposed to where it is today. It's what casual fans do. Q. Looking at the leaderboard in Portland when there was a German, a Spaniard, a Canadian, obviously, Korean, Chinese, Taiwan, and this is just in the top 15. It's such a global game. MIKE WHAN: Right. I was saying to a reporter today who was walking in the Pro-Am, I really believe we're the most borderless sport in the world, women's golf. I think every other sport, in fact, I know some firsthand, that are trying to model us because what comes out of where we are today. Now, again, you're right. Back in 2008 and 2009, the question was is it going to kill you? And the weird thing is now you jump six years ahead, it's our greatest asset. We used to have 12 countries televise us. Now we have 170 countries televise us. So why would 170 countries care? Because we have their best female athlete from Malaysia plays on my Tour. The best female athlete from Taiwan plays on my Tour, from Thailand, from Australia. So if you want to watch your best female athletes, we're where you watch them. The really cool thing about that is where viewership happens, sponsorship happens, so if you looked at my list of sponsors, it's completely global. It's borderless. I remember, we had a player meeting in 2010, I said I've been part of a few companies going global. It sounds great and makes for a great power point presentation, but going global is hard. It's like driving through a tunnel to get to the other side. The first part of the tunnel is dark and scary, and your mind is saying go back. But if you just keep going, you find your way through it. We didn't have any people to model either. There weren't a lot of sports. I like tennis, the fact that players come from all over, but tennis doesn't have a home. Players all live where they grew up and they fly to events. The LPGA, we wanted North America to be our home, so we wanted to play 60 to 70% of our events here and commit to being global with the other 30%, and that was tough. It's easy to say we'll go where we go and travel every week. Most of my players live in five or six cities. They come from all over the world and they become ac mated. Q. How has Rio been as a partner? MIKE WHAN: It's kind of funny. Partnership is weird. When I think of partner I think of our Tour sponsors. It's Rio's show, so Rio's going to put on the Olympics. They've been great in helping us get the golf course built, but other than that I don't have a ton of interaction with Rio 2016. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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