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CME GROUP TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 16, 2018

Mike Whan

Naples, Florida

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our State of the LPGA with Commissioner Mike Whan. Mike is joining us in between sessions with our board and foundation, so thank you very much for taking the time to join us.

We will open the floor to Mike to tell you what's going on out here on tour and open it up for questions.

MIKE WHAN: Thank you. I've never I think used a microphone in this group before, but today it's a requirement. When Armstrong asked me to give a little review of the year I asked her what does she want to hear? What would you guys want to hear?

She said just do a little reflection. I'm not sure this is what you signed up for, because I reflected a little farther back. Because I could sit up here and tell you about five majors and five winners and sister acts and Ariya's incredible seen.

You've both written that, and I'm not going to provide any great insight into that that you don't know and can track yourself. I was thinking when you asked me to reflect -- your mistake -- I really reflected back over nine years. When I was in Asia, this wasn't an interview, but it was a government official I was having dinner with said, So much change in the LPGA in the last nine years. How does change come? What stages?

I remember thinking, I don't know really know. I went back to my room that night, and so this is my reflection. I said, When I started we really focused on staff change, cultural change. Two words: Role reversal. Two words: Embrace global. Those two things to say today inside the LPGA are humorous because role reversal and embrace global is what we are.

But 2010, role reverse and embrace global really fairly new ideas. We were global. I'm just not sure we were embracing it, and certainly nobody grasped what role reversal meant. Because of the cultural changes that those things created, we have things like "act like a founder" and we have talent that has now come to us from PGA TOUR, PGA of America, NASCAR, ESPN, et cetera.

So I really think that those cultural changes created a culture that people wanted to work at. When I think back to 2010, we needed to make major changes. It's strange to think about today, but back then we knew that KNC wasn't going to The be KNC in the couple years. We knew that Wegman's was going to do it for one more year, and we were not convinced that we had a title sponsor for the Women's British Open.

That was all of that in 2011. I'm thinking, We've got four majors -- that's when we had four majors -- and three of them are really not secure a year from now.

To jump forward, I think I we've got ANA and Women's PGA with KPMG. We're going to announce a new long-term partner on the British Open week. Next week, Heather?

Obviously Evian with us long-term and the U.S. Women's Open just continue to climb to new heights. It's really exciting to think, because I remember at the time thinking, How do you build a schedule when you don't have the pillars? You got to have pillars. Those are the majors and then you build around them. Now I think we've got pillars for the long run.

From building major changes we started working on schedule changes. I think because I said embrace global so much in the beginning everybody just assumed I was going to build more like a WTA schedule and we were just going and we were going to play wherever we played.

I remember saying at the time, Our goal is to deliver two events in had North America for every one event we deliver outside of North America. I'm not sure if I told you that, but we talked about that internally.

At the time we had six events at $2 million or more. We didn't have a season-long race. We didn't really -- this is a personal frustration of mine -- we didn't really celebrate our history at any event; we certainly didn't have an event that was built around it.

We didn't have events that really addressed women's issues and the things that were important in the companies that were sponsoring us. I think you guys all know those changes.

The last thing we built over those early years was coverage changed. Went from 200 hours of tape-delayed TV to nearly 500 hours of live TV. Went from I think 11 countries to televising us to 170 countries, and we went from essentially a long-term run of decreased ratings to a seven-year run of increased ratings.

So that's my reflection. Again, has nothing to do with 2018, so I'm sorry if that's what you came to hear.

But when I think back to those changes and that reflection, it's all pretty internal. It was all pretty much about us. It was about changing our culture, about changing our majors, about changing the way we thought about coverage.

We didn't spend much time in my first six or seven years really focusing on the outside world, which, my friend Nancy points out to me once a year in an interview.

But we really spent the last 18 months talking about three core things. One, the LPGA breadth, the breadth of our family, how many people do we touch and how big is the LPGA organization.

So in the last few years we've really gone from having a thousand teachers on the LPGA to having nearly 800 teachers on the LPGA. As most of you know, we went from really engaging 4,000 girls a year to this year we'll engage over 80,000 girls a year into girls' golf.

We went from having no girls' golf leadership academies to having it be almost a regular monthly thing for us in the summertime where we're really impacting high school girls as we go.

And we went from really having no concentrated effort to reach out, connect, and interact with women who play this game and love the LPGA and have any connection with us, and that's why the EWGA merger, that's why the women's network, that's why we spent so much time, effort, and money in the last couple years, to make sure that our breadth, our impact, is bigger than just tours and teachers.

The second thing you'll be hearing a lot more about from somebody smarter than me in Roberta, another great example of hiring people smarter than you so you don't have to work as hard, is that we've realized that companies view us differently in 2018 than they did in 2010. And if I'm being perfectly honest, we understand that companies view us differently in 2018 than maybe even we viewed ourselves. Because when we start thinking about all the companies that have joined us in the last three years, they really love the connection on women's empowerment, diversity, and inclusion, the uniqueness of our Tour.

Because there is no shape or size or background or country or language that defines the LPGA. What defines the LPGA is persistent success, leadership. Every one of those women out there runs their own little business. We've got moms and we've got kids that probably still live with their moms all winning on Tour at the LPGA.

And we've got short, tall, big, small, and it's really -- we've realized as companies have started to join us, is they like what we represent and what it means even inside their building. I've talked to so many companies that talk about they're trying to understand leadership, not just women's leadership, men's leadership, not just diversity, but diversity of how a leader ought to look and act, introverts ought to lead and IT people ought to lead, and how do we build that kind of organization.

And I said, we show that every day, and I think you should expect through Roberta's leadership and some of the things we're doing with some of our core board members a change even in how we position ourselves, because what these women are representing is bigger than athletes. It's bigger than golf. It's literally blazing a path just like the women did before them.

These young women are the "see it," as Condoleezza Rice once said, are the "see it to be it." We're letting young women from all over the world believe this is possible. I guess we were always doing that, but maybe we didn't take ourselves as serious on that. We're going to.

And the last thing is we're really thinking about the LPGA's role in the game. If I'm being honest with you, in my first five years our role in the game was to make sure we had a role in the game. We wanted to make sure we built a schedule where you saw us all the time; our fans could follow us.

But now whether that comes to new formats or network exposure or the digital experience you could gain from us around the world or the way we connect with amateurs, the way we expand what's been an incredible girls' golf story around the world, so that we don't just have 33 to 35 percent of junior golfers in America as women, but we can start to see that happen in more and more countries.

We never felt that responsibility from 2010 to 2016, but in the last two years we've really changed that responsibility. I think if you had to have an expectation from us, expect us to have a bigger reach. This is my toss pile. Expect us to have a bigger reach in the world of women's golf, not just in the States, but worldwide, because I think once you become more successful and more staid, that becomes part of your responsibility.

That doesn't mean we'll do everything everybody wants us to do. The greatest way for a commissioner to lose his job is to promise a bunch of stuff you can't deliver. Just like every CEO, I really believe that focus is my greatest strength and desire is my greatest weakness. I have a desire to do everything that needs to be fixed in women's golf, but if we can stay focused we'll be good at what we choose to do.

I did write some notes down about 2018, but I already told you I can't tell you much about that. But there were some incredible moments, as there always is. I'll think about homecomings, homecoming wins. I'll think about sister acts that are going to be with us for a long time. I think some of the greatest dramatic major wins in my nine years as commissioner.

I went home the weekend of ANA, shame on me, and then I remember saying to our group, I know we're going to play on Monday. I just hope it's not a one-hole playoff, because once you've got to pay all that money for Monday -- I'm glad it was as fun as it was, regardless.

The UL Crown went global, and I don't know that we're ever going to get it back in that box. We saw the UL Crown literally take off and have other countries start to realize what we were building here.

We saw Ariya set some standards on a totally personal level. I'll never forget standing on the 18th green when Angela Stanford realized that she'd won. Angela Stanford and I have a long history of talking about golf, because she's a talker and so am I. So I just love getting in her head. I know how she's hard worked, and it's always been amazing to me that she hadn't won a major. So to see somebody cross that off their list is pretty cool things.

And I think even the Symetra Tour side, to see Symetra Tour go from 12 events to pretty standard regular diet of 22, I'm pretty sure we'll be between 22 and 25 next year, we'll continue to see purse increases there.

I like what we've done on Q-Series. I know everyone has got their own point of view on Q-Series, but I really think the key to Q-Series was let's take the people outside the top 100 and inside the top 30 and some top players from around the world that are having a season-long or two-season-long resume, not a weekend-long resume, and let's see who's the best of the best and let's give out cards that way.

I certainly understand that when we chose a Q-Series date that caused scheduling problems for people, and I'd love to tell you that that is a major concern of mine. It's not. I have major scheduling problems. I wish we could play the second week in April, but there is this tournament in Georgia that tends to throw me out of that mix, right?

I wish I could play on the Super Bowl Sunday, but I don't get to play on the Super Bowl Sunday. So all of us have a big brother that we're watching. Every time Jay decides to make a slight tweak in the PGA TOUR schedule we make 17 tweaks in our schedule.

We're going to build a Q-Series where the best players can come together. Do we have it exactly right on college kids? I don't know, and we'll take another look at that. Do I believe in deferral? I do. I've wanted to do that for a while. I'm really glad we finally got to that level.

Whether or not we were right on the five in five out on the final stage I don't know, but I don't agree with what I've read, which is somebody has got to be pro before the day she shows up.

I know that college kids in basketball now are going to be in the draft, and if they don't get drafted they're going to go back to school. I think everything is very pro athlete, and I think we need to be pretty pro athlete, too. But I understand that it means you might have to think about your college schedule different, and I know that's tough. But the rest of us are dealing with schedule challenges week in and week out.

That sounded kind of negative. I didn't mean it to be. I think that's kind of my reflections. There's more stuff in here I should probably tell you, but my voice isn't feeling it.

In terms of 2019 highlights, I'm excited about some new events you already know about; maybe one or two you don't. We plan to launch the schedule the way we have the last three years and send it out the week after Thanksgiving. Two reasons for that: One is I don't really want to answer a bunch of questions about it in the middle of Terry's biggest moment when we just doubled the purse, and two is we honestly still have one tournament we're finalizing and I need another week to do it.

I think we've got some pretty cool news across the board. I really like the fact that we're not only having new events but new formats, things like the Tournament of Champions, things like Dow, even one of the new events you'll see when we launch is also a different format than what we've done before.

I think you're going to see some really cool things like Aon Risk-Reward, something we've never done before with a sponsor we've never done it with. But to do it together with the PGA TOUR and play both the men and the women, a million dollars at the end of the season, is a pretty cool thing.

As I told you, we'll have some new news on the British Open, the Women's British Open in the next week or two, and we'll have a new long-term partner there.

Most importantly, when I start thinking about our biggest events over the next four or five years, they're going to be played on some of the biggest stages in golf. Hazeltine, Aronimink, Charleston. Not sure we're announced that one yet. Baltusrol we've announced, right? Olympic we've announced, right? Have we announced something else in the Olympic area? Have we announced Pebble? Okay, Pebble we've announced. I've got a couple in here I'm not going to tell you.

You think about being a Tour player in today's era, I just played in the pro-am with Georgia Hall, and Georgia looked at me, and she said, I'm really lucky to be playing right now. I thought she meant actually today and I was all excited because I was her pro-am partner. I was like, I'm really not that good. You'll see. She goes, I don't mean today, I mean I'm really lucky to be playing right now, meaning I'm going to get to play on some of the greatest venues in the world and not just a great players I grew up with, but great players from all over the world. It seems like at our biggest events people are paying more attention to us than ever before.

That was actually a better compliment than I want to be playing today, which I thought was pretty cool until I realized it wasn't about me. But I really think that's an important message for young girls right now, that we're going to put women on some of the greatest stages in some of the greatest events. Hopefully you're going to see purses just continue to do what they've been doing. Hopefully when the schedule comes out next year you'll see that our number of events is about the same.

We don't want to go more. We need to keep adding three or four every year just to be the same, but our purses will be up over $70 million. I hope we show it when we release it. Maybe we should. Let's take a look at the number of $2 million events versus just a few years ago, the number of $3 million and higher events versus a couple years ago, the number of $4 million and higher events versus a couple years ago, and I will tell you that Terry's event won't be the highest purse on the LPGA schedule in 2019.

So it's an exciting time. I'm excited about the announcement and I'm excited about the fact that for the first time I think we can think about more than just LPGA and Symetra Tour. We'll try to get ourselves involved in some other parts of the game and make a real difference.

Q. I've got two questions. One is kind of big and one is sort of small ball. The first one is regarding television, which you've mentioned before. Every year we seem to have this conversation, and every year you're talking about wanting to get on network, and the television landscape is changing. A lot more people are going to digital platforms. A lot more streaming networks are doing well, and a lot more leagues are considering assuming production costs and just streaming their own content. You already assume a lot of your own production costs. Is that something you're in conversations about perhaps doing?
MIKE WHAN: Less so in the States; more so internationally. In the beginning -- there's a lot more activities in terms of building digital platforms all throughout the world that could be more than country at a time. It could be across multiple countries. Those are things we're looking at.

In each of our international deals they go a certain length of time, but as we think about our long-term international deals there's certain countries that just don't televise golf, and they certainly don't televise women's golf. Having digital platforms in those countries and watching the way my 20-year olds watch sports, I can see that as an advantage.

I think you can safely assume the LPGA will have a more digital -- will have more digital opportunities going forward worldwide.

In the States we've had a nice partnership in the Golf Channel in that now. One of the things I've been trying to work out is I want to see how many folks are watching us streaming versus linear TV, because it's kind of like apps and websites of the past. Your website numbers can go down, but you actually have more viewers because so many people are coming out in apps. I think we're about to have that kind of flip in the States.

But yeah, today in our U.S., all of our rights, including both streaming and linear in any event, are with The Golf Channel. We're going to be going through our own negotiations in 2019 for a '20 and beyond partner, and I know that anything we do in a '20 and beyond partnership will have both linear and streaming rights tied to them, because it is going to be an important part.

And I think the good news is even the biggest linear partners that we know are also investing in a big way in that landscape.

What was your small ball question?

Q. I'm one of those guys you disagree with about Q-Series and them turning pro. What do you say to a player like a Kelly Shon or a Cheyenne Woods who are out there competing against these amateurs who really have nothing to lose, because if they don't make it they just go back to school.
MIKE WHAN: I would say that's exactly the way Q-school has been for the last 40 years. You've been playing against amateurs, and at the end of the thing, if she doesn't win, she's going back to school. If she wins then she has a decision to make to turn pro or not in 30 minutes.

But when she was playing, she was playing against you just like she was playing against Annika and just like she was playing against Michelle. I do think it's a fair question on whether or not what the number is and should we allow everyone just to start in stage 3. I think that's a fair question, and we've been scratching our head on that and we're going to think more about it.

But I think the whole she's got to be pro to play against me, I get it. I have plenty of my own players, even my own board members players, disagree with me on that, which means I may or may not win. I'm just being honest with you.

But I think even those players that don't like it played against amateurs in Q-school and they beat them, right? I think if an amateur who's in college or hasn't gone to college comes into Q-school and beats somebody who's 126 on the Money List last year, yeah, I'd like to meet her, because I think she's proven that she can actually hang out here.

What I didn't like is you have one more year to finish your education, one more year to finish your school. Maybe your school is playing for a national championship. We kind of tear that away at that moment. I like the deferral of that plan. I have for a while, but we had our own concerns.

Early on we felt if we took the deferral out -- if we put the deferral in we'd have this onslaught of now everybody who's got a rich uncle is going to be here and we're just going to have freshmen and everybody come.

But I think with Q-Series and the tighter pipe window from stage 2 to stage 3 that's less of an issue than it was when we went got started. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree. I know I've got a lot of my own members who don't like that answer. It doesn't mean I'm not right. I'm just answering your question. That was bigger than small ball.

Q. Depending on what happens Sunday, you're either going to have 25 or 26 winners this year. I guess what's the balance between, or do you have a preference between -- would you rather see from a marketability standpoint somebody be absolutely dominant and win six, seven, or eight times, or is this kind of the way you'd prefer it, where literally it can be a different winner every week and people seem to be fine with that, too?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, this is the one where I'm going to answer your question and you're not going to like it. From a media perspective, if I was in the media, give me the female Tiger, because I'm going to learn everything about the female Tiger. I'm going to write about her and she's going to be the one, and my editor will let me write about her because the next Annika is here, so she'll be able to -- the women's media will get better.

I would definitely prefer the top 10 players in the World Rankings come from 10 different countries. The reason is, if I get one player who wins 33 percent of the time she tees it up, when she doesn't tee it up, it's not the same event. You're not here; you won't be here. I'll be spending most of my time with that title sponsor trying to keep him eating and drinking and trying to explain why that player is not there.

Because what you end up getting are either the events she's there and the events she's not, and TV becomes like that, too. The events she's there and the events she's not. Good news for me is I don't have to worry about that any time soon apparently, and it doesn't mean that if we get one player who outpaces everybody for the next four years and she becomes a superstar, I'm not an idiot. I know how to get on that train and we'll make that as big as we can.

But in terms of -- this is, again, Marilynn Smith is here this week, and Marilynn Smith says to me the same thing that Shirley Spork says and the same thing that Marlene Hagge says, and while we're sitting there at Founders, every one of them says it: Do you feel comfortable you're leaving the game better for the next generation? Is this a better opportunity for these girls' daughters than them? Because they're thinking about their daughters. They're always one generation next.

And for me the best thing I can do for the next generation is make sure there's great players from all over the world and everybody all around the world can engage in this sport. No matter where you're from you've got a microphone holder. I'm starting to see it already. It used to be when we played in China the only person they wanted to talk to was Shanshan Feng. That's the only person they wanted in the media center.

Now we go to the media center and they want to talk to Lexi, they want to talk to So Yeon Ryu, they want to talk to Brooke Henderson. Brooke Henderson in Asia this year was a rock star. I can remember just five or six years ago they wouldn't have wanted a Canadian in the Taiwan Center. It was Yani or nobody. When Yani left the entire media left the room and our media day was over.

I think it's really cool that's what's going on in women's golf. I really think whether we like it or not, what's going on in women's golf is just a precursor. I think you all know that men's golf is going to look just like women's golf in 10 years. There is virtually no doubt about it.

It's not like great male golfers aren't coming from all over the world, and at some point they're going to play on the PGA TOUR and you're going to have a lot more flags on a lot more leaderboards. Already, I mean, versus when I started in 2010 to today, it's changed there, as well.

I think it's the future. I think, like I've told you guys before, I believe in it because I believe in the Olympics. I don't think the Olympics has problems because so many flags are on so many boards. I think you just fall in love with players and you learn their background. I don't know how you listen to Jin Young Ko last night and not love that kid, right?

I'd root for her and doesn't mater where she grew up. And I watch her work out in the same gym next to Stacy Lewis and she deserves to be where she is. So once you know these stories I think it stops mattering kind of where they come from.

But it's good for our business, right? Success from all over the world means TV interests all over the world; TV interests means sponsorships. I'm not sure the LPGA could survive as a U.S. North American, parts of Europe Tour. We're surviving because we're global, and I think the brands that are starting to attach to us love that about us.

It's a different answer. If I come back here in three years and do a state of the Tour and somebody has been Player of the Year for three years, I'm going to tell you this is the greatest thing to ever happen to women's golf. So you can put whatever asterisk you want next to that, but I think the more global we can be with superstar leaders and the more it just showcases that they're not that different, come on.

Azahara Munoz and Nelly Korda are so much more alike than different, and so if you try to separate them by a flag that's just you working hard, you know.

Q. Following up on that a little bit, the global embrace notwithstanding, is it pleasing at all this year to have seen eight American winners versus two only two years ago? At this point in the LPGA is there any tangible benefits to having more Americans being winners on the Tour?
MIKE WHAN: This is embarrassing to admit, but I didn't know we had eight winners this year. But it's good to know. It's kind of funny, I think I'd said this a couple years ago. When we had a run -- I think about three years ago when the first half of the year I think it was overwhelmingly American winners, we had a lot of our international TV partners complaining. I didn't sign up for this. I didn't pay for this. We're not winning.

Well, we haven't been winning over here for a while, so get used to it. It's good for our U.S. business to have American winners. It's good for our international business to have U.S. winners. I mean, I will tell you that Danielle Kang has no less of a following in Korea than she is in LA. It's just -- people want to see her. She's a unique superstar. And it's good. I want to keep growing our U.S. ratings. I want to keep growing our U.S. business.

We've got a ton of North American sponsors. I want to have them not American heros, too. I don't mean my global thing to be an anti-American spiel. I'm born in Chicago. I'd like to see Americans win. I enjoyed the Solheim Cup in Des Moines. But I don't think the Tour is reliant on it.

I think if you and I were sitting here in 2010 and you would have said to me, Mike, I know how many Americans are going to win for the next seven years, I have two this year, four that year, eight that year, 11 that year; how do you feel about the growth of the Tour? I would've said, we're going to be up 125 percent. You'd have said, he's nuts. No way they're going to be up 125 percent if that's the -- but that's true.

Q. Do you have any thoughts or comments on Suzy Whaley becoming president of the PGA of America?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, it's about time, you know, and I hope -- I was kind of hoping that the next secretary they voted in was going to be female, too, so this isn't an anomaly along the way. If you've met Suzy Whaley, she's the exact right flag bearer for this. She's classy. She'll deal with some of the goods and the bads that come with it. She's an incredible instructor and an incredible person.

I think young girls are going to look up to her the way we want them to look up to her. My players respect her. My staff respects her. It'll only enhance the relationship we have with the PGA of America.

Like anything, I think now we'll all look back and go, well, that wasn't such a big deal, was it? Of course we should have a female every other presidency. I think it's no different than anything else.

When I tell people that I report to a board of 15 people and 11 of them are women, they're going to go, really? Then you come to a board meeting and you go, that's like any other board meeting. Just there's more women in the room.

I have eight direct reports, nine direct reports, and seven of them are women. It may be different than what people are used to, but I don't think it makes it strange. And then once you experience it it's a no-brainer. She's special, but I hope that it doesn't take that special to follow, because I think it's not a job meant for a man, just like the one I'm sitting in. It's just a job meant for somebody who wants to lead, and she's going to be great at that.

Q. You talk about global; what is the nature of the relationship right now with the LPGA and the LET, and is there any change on the horizon there?
MIKE WHAN: I don't think so. You know, we've got an ongoing relationship with the LET. Obviously we're on a monthly basis we're talking about Solheim Cup issues. We haven't really reengaged in the conversation of us being involved or leading the LET. They've made some changes both on their board and in their leadership.

I think they're off and running. Because we have a lot of players who play on both tours, I have a lot of individual conversations with players, but nothing on the grand scope that's -- nothing has scheduled and nothing has changed currently.

Q. And on the TV rights situation, many months ago you announced a partnership, I believe, for lack of a better word, with the PGA TOUR where the two of you were going to approach media on a joint basis. What has become of that, and how will that factor into your TV negotiations for '20 and beyond?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, every time in LPGA history they've negotiated or we've negotiated our U.S. rights, or international rights for that matter, we've always used an agent, IMG, Wasserman. We've always used somebody to represent us. We asked Tim and Jay two years ago to be our agent when our rights came up in the U.S. at the end of 2019.

So the PGA is representing the LPGA, and first in discussions with Golf Channel. As part of our process we're going to first negotiate with Golf Channel. If we don't come to a compromise, then we'd do something on a much broader assessment.

But I just felt like the PGA TOUR had negotiated its rights three or four times since we've last done it; I've never done it. I got here in 2010 and our Golf Channel deal was done.

When I look at some of the things that's in the PGA TOUR agreement, I wouldn't have been smart enough to ask for some of those things because I didn't know. So like anything else, when you realize that you're over your head, you ask somebody smarter than you to help.

I thought it was pretty cool of both Jay and Tim at the time to say they had interest and a willingness to do that. I think at the end of the day we're hoping that we end up on a similar network to the PGA TOUR long term, because whatever network has got all of that is probably going to be really invested in golf.

But that's probably not a requirement, either. So I'm viewing them as my IMG in this case. Pretty different than our overall strategic partnership. In that case, we're doing a lot of stuff back and forth. In this case they're literally our sports agent. We're the athlete. They're going to go out and negotiate and come back to us with options in an effort to get the best coverage we can get for the U.S.

Our U.S. deal is more important than just U.S. coverage because what gets produced here in the U.S. gets showcased in 170 countries every week. The good news about our partnership with the Golf Channel is they produce quality work that we can then both sell and show all over the world. So it's been a great partnership.

Q. There's so many things you measure or you can measure -- (audio disturbance.)
MIKE WHAN: Girls entering the game. We have not been as involved in measuring the amount of impact we're making on adults. The reason we did, that was a strategic decision we made about nine years ago, which was if we were going to change the face of the game, you could spend a lot of time trying to get 50 years olds to come back and play or play for the first time, or you could try to get a lot of 12 year olds to play for the first time, and no matter when they come in and out they're going to be with you for life.

So we really dove full hog into let's get young girls playing the game. Let's get them introduced to the game. Because once you get introduced to this game at a young age, it stays with you. Even if you step away from it you can come back. You can be a fan. You're still buying golf trips and joining CME Group TOUR Championships.

So we've spent a lot of time on that side and have tracked that quite a bit. We've asked the NGF to track it with us. We don't just want to be a charitable group that has these really cool stats about how many people we've sent brochures to or how many people have swung a club with us. We want to make sure it's moving the needle as it relates to girls playing golf.

That's the thing actually -- I've said this many times -- whenever they're ready to get a new commissioner and throw me out, which we're commissioners, we don't know that until this happens, but whenever that happens, the thing I'll be most proud of is that I think we're leaving the pipeline for women in this game better than before.

So we measure that quite a bit. Now that we're involved and have kind of acquired the EWGA and we've got the LPGA Amateur Golf Association now that we're building the Women's Golf Network, we're going to be a lot more both interested and invested in growing women's golf across the board at all ages and creating opportunities for them to do just that.

We want to get more connected with women who play the game, first in America and then we'll slowly take that around the world no different than we did in girls' golf. In terms of what we measure on that side of the equation, that's what we measure. To your point, we measure an awful lot on the professional side.

First and foremost, the LPGA has to be -- this hangs right above my desk, by the way -- has to be the No. 1 place for women to play professional golf in the world. This has to be the greatest stage to go test yourself in the world. And when we have that right, we have the ability to do a lot of other things.

If we ever lose that we're really going to -- all the other stuff is going to become secondary pretty quick.

Q. How do you test that stage? Are you getting ratings from -- you're playing Korea or the Korean channels giving you numbers? How are you gathering that information?
MIKE WHAN: So we feel like from a Tour perspective we have to be at least twice as high as any other Tour in the world in terms of what you play for, twice as high in terms of number of world ranked players that play on that Tour, and at least twice as high as any other television exposures thing.

Today I think any other television exposure number, and we do get household numbers across the U.S. Today nobody is close to us on that. But I think you've got to have that hanging no different than every company knows what your core strength is.

I don't mind getting involved in Symetra and growing that. I don't mind figuring out Q-Series. I don't mind getting involved in the Amateur Golf Association. But first and foremost we've got to be the best stage in the world for young girls. That's really what started -- when 13 women got together, which is we're going to create a stage that women have a chance to play competitively against the best other women in the world.

If we do that right, as Louise Suggs said, we figured if we did that right other opportunities would follow. If we keep doing that right, all these other opportunities we're doing get to follow. If we ever miss that...

So, yeah, 80 percent of my time is spent on number one and 20 percent on the other. I'm not sure I would say the same about my staff, but it definitely -- the LPGA Tour being the best Tour in the world has got to be priority one.

Q. Going back to when you were talking about role reversal when you first started as commissioner, can you give us some examples of how it was going poorly in that regard with the sponsorships and then how you changed that around?
MIKE WHAN: You know, at the risk -- I won't give you specifics, but I can only think of the stories in my head. When I joined the LPGA, in my first few months, I think you guys remember it took 100 days, didn't make any decisions; didn't want to make any decisions.

In that 100 days I went and visited probably six recently departed sponsors, pretty large ones from the LPGA. You remember Herb Lotman? Herb Lotman was hard to forget. He was tough on me, but I loved him. Herb Lotman took me to dinner, sat across from me at dinner, and he said, either you're paying for tonight's dinner or I am.

Here's the question you've got to answer correctly: Who's your customer? And I said, well, it used to be you, and if the dinner goes well it'll be you again. He goes, what do you mean? I said, tournaments are my customer, like the people that write the check. I can't pay my employees unless you pay me.

And he actually said, not only are we going to have steak, as only Herb would, we're going to have the best wine in the steakhouse. But for him, he felt like the LPGA at the time didn't understand who the customer was. It was the members. It was the fans. It was the volunteers. There was a lot of people, but the check writers didn't feel like it was them.

I mean, I remember thinking, I think it was my first or second trip I'd made and I kind of tested that theory as I hit the road then, and it was a pretty consistent theme. A lot of people had left us because they didn't think we cared about their business. They thought we cared about our business. You remember that we were right in the middle of a pretty significant recession, so you had a lot of companies that stock price was down. They were laying off employees.

It's a tough time when your business goes sideways. And at the same time, we were raising all of our fees, TV fees, sanction fees, asking to play on better golf courses, complaining about lower purses. And I get that. I mean, that's a tough group to work for. They want to do better than they did last year.

So role reversal for me was not only making sure that I understood -- it's like anything else. Once you have an aha moment it only affects your company if everybody has an aha moment. So my job was how do I turn this clear role reversal thing? I got off a plane one time with an employee of mine, great employee; still works today; still a direct report of mine. I said, tell me about -- and we were at a tournament. I said, tell me about this sponsor, and they gave me that great, great synopsis about why we're here and what the title sponsor wants and everything else.

Then later that night I went to dinner with that title sponsor, not with the employee, and they could not have been more wrong. I mean, just missed it across the board. But what they said made sense. If you didn't know them that's what you would've guessed, and that's clearly what they employee did.

I came back from dinner that night and I wrote down and I had breakfast the next morning with the employee, and I said, just so you know, this is why they write the check. This is what they hope we do. This is what they hope our athletes say when they get interviewed, and none of them say this because they all say what you think is -- so our staff didn't know what the check writers wanted.

So those are -- you know, when you're a new executive, when you're a new employee, I mean, you guys have all been new at companies before, the stuff that isn't working is so obvious in your first 90 days. I had a really good boss. My first boss at Proctor & Gamble said, 120 days, paper and pencil, no mouth. Tough for me. So just write down all the stuff you see that's wrong. I had 58 things. This is a true story. I have 58 things on my desk at home that I wrote down in my first 100 days. A lot of them have been crossed off. Some of them were stupid in hindsight.

But a lot of them -- some of them still on there and not crossed off, because nine years later I still can't change some of them because you have big, engrained corporate philosophies and cultures. Some things you can change quickly; some things takes over time; some things they disagree with me on. So it's going to take a while.

But, yeah, role reversal to me was painfully honest, and what was really cool about it. Every sport sucked at it. Every sport. So I thought if we could figure it out, not only will we be a better Tour, we'll be better than other sports. And I would tell you today we are better than other sports. Not on everything, not on most things, but we're better at that than everybody else.

You can talk to me about the NFL all you want. The NFL doesn't understand check writers. They're athletes. They don't care about the check writers. They don't care about the owners half the time, and then owners don't care about -- if they have unions they're talking to each other.

My members are on my board, and we talk about check writers. It's the only agenda item on most board meetings. That role reversal caused so many more things. It caused the customer profile card. It caused media training. Like all things we do now kind of stemmed out of -- I literally just asked all of our tournament partners yesterday in their meeting to take a look at their customer profile card, tear it up, and let's come up with a new and more fun approach.

If you want to do a 30-second video from your CEO to my players I'll send it to them on the Tuesday night of your tournament. If you want to do a pizza party on Monday night of your tournament where you tell them what's important to you this week. I want to make sure our athletes, our caddies, our staff keep hearing why Terry wants to have an LPGA event, because if you think it's because Terry wants to brand CME and that's what you think, then you can't help Terry. Sorry, you got me going on my favorite topic.

Q. You know, so many successes, but what goal or vision most frustrates you that you haven't attained or you're not close enough to attaining yet that you thought you would be?
MIKE WHAN: You answer it. Go ahead. What do you think I'm going to say?

Q. I'm not touching it.
MIKE WHAN: You know what I'm going to say. I'm frustrated that we don't have a regular diet of network TV. And, I mean, I don't think that comes as a shock to you. And that's not a shot to The Golf Channel. It's not a shot to networks. That's me. I should be better than that.

We are at a stage now where we deserve that stage and I can't deliver it yet. I'm going to. I just thought I'd be done by now. I thought I'd be done with that milestone. That was a milestone that I didn't think was going to be that hard to get to. I thought we could play 10 weekends a year. If a third of our events were on network TV, every one of those girls' hats would be worth more; this Tour would be worth more; I'd be a better partner to The Golf Channel, worldwide we'd be better; I'd have more sponsors interested in us; every one of our events would have higher attendance. So once you know all that, then you just say to yourself, just go get it done.

Yeah, shame on me. I think I've told you before my dad used to say, it's okay to have problems, you just can't have the same problems next year. I've had that problem for six years, so it's starting to get a little silly. So I'll fix it. I know I'm going to get there, but I'm frustrated that we're not there yet.

Q. What is it going to take for you to have a seat at the table with the Augusta green jackets?
MIKE WHAN: I've not asked for a seat at that table. I'm pretty sure that table is not holding a spot for me. But I don't know. You know, it's a membership that they do what they want to do. You guys all know I haven't been shy of asking. I never really expected to win in my ask, but I certainly wasn't going to be afraid to ask.

I can't -- I may not love the date of the amateur Augusta National -- help me -- August National Women's Amateur, but I do appreciate the step forward. I mean, would I appreciate it more if it was Tour players walking up 18 after a four-day event? Of course, but that's not my place, and no different than the conversation we just had with network.

You know, I know what I can achieve and what I can't achieve. I'm not waking up in the morning, ever, thinking if I could just get over the line with Augusta.

I mean, I don't know how to achieve that, so where you don't know how to achieve something you focus on the things you can achieve. I would tell you Augusta -- in a totally different way Augusta has been good to me. They've been good to me and the LPGA, just not in a tournament way. They've written big checks to girls' golf. They've been incredibly complimentary on how we've moved the needle in the NGF numbers, not just charitable numbers.

Augusta National has been a great partner to women's golf, whether it's World Golf Hall of Fame and Hall of Fame induction speeches, Olympics. Actually I would tell you that Will Jones, I would consider Will Jones one of my really good friends. But it doesn't mean I don't wish Will Jones would call me with a different call than Augusta National Amateur.

But I think Augusta National makes their own decisions for their own course. They've made them, but I wouldn't lie to you and say that they haven't helped me out when asked in other areas. It's just the tournament one hasn't been a resounding yes.

Q. I just want to make sure I didn't mishear a word. You said Terry's event will not be the highest purse next year.
MIKE WHAN: Did I say that?

Q. I think so.
MIKE WHAN: I think I said that.

Q. I think you did. I just wanted to make sure that that's exactly what you said.
MIKE WHAN: That is exactly what I said.

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