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DIAMOND RESORTS TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONSJanuary 16, 2019Jerry FoltzKaren StupplesPaige MacKenzieLake Buena Vista, Florida Q. I can start with a question for you guys, just getting kickstarted. I guess, first of all, if you guys could share your thoughts on this event, the format. Karen? KAREN STUPPLES: I've been very fortunate that I've covered this event the last couple of years, where it's been a combination of Senior Tour, celebrities, and LPGA players. It's always been a joy to me to come and see the differences in the types of golf, but I felt like everybody really enjoyed the LPGA players' personalities. It was a really good combination with the celebrities, and there seemed to be good gelling between those two. It just seemed like a really natural fit to me for this to become an LPGA event. I think it's right that finally now it's a proper Tournament of Champions. We had one a while ago. 2007, I think, was the last time a Tournament of Champions was played. I played in it a couple of times, and it was great. You're able to -- it's like a reward for winning, and you feel special when you get into those events. I think the players that win deserve it. PAIGE MACKENZIE: Having a Tournament of Champions with a celebrity component, there's probably not a better tournament to have that on the LPGA schedule. It's a great way to kick off the year. It's going to be a little bit looser. Obviously, they're playing for a ton of money, and it means a lot to the 26 players in the field. But it's a perfect and a very appropriate time on the schedule to have this mixed event. JERRY FOLTZ: I told Karen, I think it was two years ago, maybe it was last year, but I predicted this would be the case. I figured once Mike Flaskey and all the people of Diamond Resorts and especially the celebrities got a taste of what it was like being around the LPGA players, who understand investing in their own product more than any other professional athlete I've ever been around. Those of us who cover the game a lot with the LPGA testify to it publicly quite often, but they're the best. They're the best brand ambassadors in all of sports, and I promised that eventually they would say we only want the LPGA players, no other pros, just the LPGA players, because they're better. They get more value for their existence here from an LPGA player than they would have gotten from any other level of professional golfer. Q. Karen, you played how many previous Tournaments of Champions? KAREN STUPPLES: My one in '04, so that would be three. Q. Is there a way to compare the atmosphere back then to, what, 15 years later? KAREN STUPPLES: I think that, remembering to when I played, it always felt like a special event. You go there as a winner. It's a nice reward for being there, but there was never a celebrity element to it. It was just a straight tournament. The last two years of tournaments, if you won, you got to play in the event. It was in Mobile, Alabama, and it was right at the very end of the year. It wasn't at the start of the year. So you have a different feeling because you've got a whole season when I played, and you had the final reward at the end of it. This is a reward to start the season, for players to get off to a little bit of a head start than some of the others, but the celebrity element adds a whole new feeling to this event. It feels much more glitzy and glamorous. Q. This may be the first time that a sponsor has been associated with a men's tour at some point, the Champions Tour, and said, no, I'm going with the LPGA. Do you think that may happen more often in the future and why? KAREN STUPPLES: There's always that potential. Sorry, I jumped in here. There's always that potential because I think that it depends on how much money sponsors want to put into events. As the PGA Tour purses keep increasing, it might price some of those sponsors out of the market, and they might want to still hold events, and they might see LPGA as a viable option. I think the other place that I think of that hosted an LPGA event -- that hosted a PGA Tour event that now has an LPGA event is Kingsmill. It's a first class event, run incredibly well, and all the players love going there because of how special they feel treated because they're used to how they treated the PGA Tour players and they treat the LPGA Tour players as well. So I think this one and that one are good examples of it, but I think the players feel very special because of it, but it would definitely be a viable option for any sponsor in the future. PAIGE MACKENZIE: I think the PGA Tour Champions and the LPGA Tour are probably vying for very similar sponsorships. I think in both cases both Tours are in for the customer service, the client service, for the experience of the event, not necessarily for the overarching brand awareness publicity that the PGA Tour sponsors might be in it for. And I think you're going to get the quality of experience at a PGA Tour Champions event and the LPGA Tour event. It doesn't surprise me that was the association prior, and it certainly doesn't surprise me they went this direction to have an official LPGA event as well because that raises their profile. If you think about it, they're not a challenge event or a challenge tour event. It's the actual official event of the LPGA Tour. JERRY FOLTZ: To answer your question, I think yes. I think absolutely there will be more. I think it's better value. I think in today's corporate culture, and I think Mike Wan's been brilliant in leading this charge as much as he can, but you have to walk the walk as much as talk the talk anymore when it comes to saying that it's equal. I think investing in the LPGA is a huge first step in proving that those things that you say in your corporate meetings and corporate charter you're actually invoking in the marketplace, and that is investing in women's sports, the empowerment of women throughout the corporate culture but also women's sports. I think, obviously, the LPGA has a head start there, and the only start compared to either being the Champions Tour -- excuse me. PGA Tour Champions and PGA Tour. We'd be hiding our head in the sand to think that it's apples to apples. It's not. It's not yet, but I pray for the day that it is, that it is apples and apples. I don't know if we'll ever get there in my lifetime. Someday we will. But I could see more events feeling like they get a better value with the LPGA than they do with other men's events, in terms of the engagement from the fans. If you go to Grand Rapids, Michigan, this summer or Green Bay, I guarantee you both those communities tell you we don't want a men's event. This is fantastic. We love having the LPGA. They show up and support it like you can't believe. Same thing with Karen's example in Kingsmill, where they did have a men's event, very successful, from a fan standpoint. It's hugely successful with a women's event. 8:30 in the morning, probably 3,000 or 4,000 people a couple years ago. It was amazing. I could see the day when the corporate decision is made to, you know what, we've done this for a while. Let's invest in the LPGA and see what that brings us. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised. Q. What are your expectations of Lexi this year, and what do you think it will take for her to be successful? PAIGE MACKENZIE: I think she has the potential to pick up where she left off. I think it's interesting that Curtis is on the bag. I think it's going to be a bigger piece to the puzzle than I probably have ever given it credit for with her is the fact that she's now seeing what she needs beside her to be successful, and that may be a tough shoe to fill. With her, we've seen improvement throughout her short irons and wedges, but we're still kind of waiting for the putter to be a weapon for her. KAREN STUPPLES: I think very much -- I mean, she's had such a roller coaster year last year with everything that she talked about in Indianapolis, with what she was going through mentally and how she's been seeking help for that, and I think that's a big key in how she progresses on through. Very physically gifted player, very talented, can't ever deny that. But just the mental side of the game and how she's been forced to dealt with the adversity she's faced, how she's coming out the other end. We see some really encouraging signs. Having her brother on the bag, as you said, Paige, as an ally is huge for her. It's someone she knows is in her camp 100 percent and somebody who she feels she can bounce ideas off of and has grown up with him, obviously her entire life, and playing golf with him too. So they know each other in a golfing sense. And I think that she seems to be a lot more content as a person, and if she can stop being so hard on herself, cut herself a little bit of slack, give herself a little bit of breathing room every once in a while, I think she's going to be a much better player than we've already seen. That's my thought. But she needs to cut herself some slack. She's so hard on herself. JERRY FOLTZ: I think this is going to be her best year ever for one simple reason. I think the production on the golf course is the least important part of the equation for her and her camp now. I think they all realized from an agent -- mom's always been a nurturer, but agent, dad, and the whole team realize that her emotional well-being can't be taken for granted. That's going to take a number one priority. As a parent, obviously, it does. As a manager, you follow the lead. And I think the results will be seen. The fact that it's going to be less important to her to play well, then she's going to do exactly what Karen stated and take the pressure off herself because she wants to be happy, first and foremost. She wants to be a normal kid, as normal as you can be living in a fish bowl. And I think that's the one element that was missing is how hard she was on herself, and I think she's going to be a lot easier on herself, and those around her are going to let her be easier. There were some tough moments to watch last year and even the year before that in some of the interactions that really were tough to watch. I don't think there will be any of that. I think everything is going to be about Lexi being happy. When she's happy, she's going to play well. Chicken and the egg. Playing well makes you happy. Does being happy make you play well? I think, in her case, being happy, feeling at peace is going to make her play even better. Q. How difficult is that, though? It's easy to say, I'm going to be easier on myself. Then you get out and have a bad day, miss a few putts, miss a few chips or whatever, and all of those old things start coming up in the back of her head. As players, how -- JERRY FOLTZ: I think you have to hit rock bottom, and I think she came pretty close last year. I think Evian was where she came as close as she could to hitting emotional rock bottom. Then you have a talk with yourself. Just I think something inside has to change, and I think that has changed with her. I really do. PAIGE MACKENZIE: And balance and finding something off of the golf course that's important. If you don't have that, then it's impossible to get out of that cycle because your entire world is inside the ropes. So for her, whether it's getting a puppy or getting out of the golf bubble and finding a new set of friends or whatever to get you away from this world all the time, I think is useful. That's as a player going through it. I never learned -- I didn't have friends outside of golf. I should have. JERRY FOLTZ: And to all those people who think they've got the cutest dog in the world, Lexi's got the cutest dog in the world. Absolutely the cutest dog in the world. Q. Is her issue mental or technical? PAIGE MACKENZIE: I think there's technique that she could be -- that could make her more consistent. KAREN STUPPLES: No doubt. But I think all of it, most of it for my money, golf in general is all mental. You see so many different swings. You look at the guy on the PGA Tour that has the 58 and 59, and that's Jim Furyk. And you wouldn't necessarily teach that to anybody else as to how to swing the ball. He knows how to get the ball in the hole. I think the art of playing golf is slowly disappearing in terms of everything now is about numbers and statistics and perfect swings and swing play, and we can talk about those because it makes a player more consistent. But ultimately, does it equal a better number on the scorecard? And I think that's still the game that we're measuring today is what number is on the scorecard, not how pretty it looks. So I think that mentally you've got to be really tough and do the things that you need to mentally in order to get those numbers lower. I think it's the most underrated part of playing golf is the mental side of it. JERRY FOLTZ: I think with some -- yeah, she could polish up a few mechanics to be more consistent, but when you see her on TV on the weekend, she's hitting it well. She doesn't get into contention by chipping and putting. She's hitting it really well. And to get across that finish line more, it all comes down to short game and mostly with her putting, and putting has so little mechanical need. You can stroke it like Cristie Kerr and be the best putter in the world, and it's not a stroke that -- she's got the Jim Furyk of putting strokes. It's not something you would teach to anybody, but she's fantastic. Q. She'll love that. JERRY FOLTZ: Cristie's going to love that, but she's the best putter day in and day out there is, she and Inbee Park. She believes it. She owns it. She's not working on it. So I think with Lexi, the mental aspect of taking pressure off herself, which is all it is on those short putts in big moments, is self-imposed pressure. And I think there's going to be a lot less of that, and I think you're going to see her have a lot more success. KAREN STUPPLES: When you watch her drive the golf ball, it's a thing of beauty. It's long. It's straight. It's phenomenal watching how her ball flies, and she's very comfortable standing over it with her driver. She stands there, and she pounds it, and she knows more often than not she's going to hit the fairway, and she's going to be fine no matter what. If she can take that same approach into her putting, I think that will be the big key for her. Q. It's interesting, Jerry, you said, her emotional rock bottom was at Evian. That was after she took a break. So what do you think? JERRY FOLTZ: There were some hard moments there that shouldn't be made public, but it might have been the worst. She was still, in my opinion at that time, still a little emotionally fragile, and I think by the end of the year when we saw her at CME, she wasn't. She was strong Lexi. When you watch her as closely as I get to do quite often, which is really a treat for me, you can see it in her eyes between shots the amount of pressure she's feeling, and a lot of it self -- imposed. It's been that way since she was 12, 13 years old. At CME, there was a lot more smiling going on. She was a lot happier, and I think that proved out in her performance. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. I don't think she's going to play when she doesn't want to play. She's going to take time off. She's going to get away from it as much as she feels she needs to. Her emotional health is priority number one now, at least to me. No statement from her camp to say that, but I just know as a parent, that's all you really want for your kid is to be happy and healthy. KAREN STUPPLES: But I also don't think you can underestimate the immense pressure she's felt throughout her career in terms of being the American hope player on the LPGA Tour. In a world, in an LPGA world that has been dominated recently by players from Korea, from Thailand, she's the top of the list of the American players with total potential to dominate and to be that number one player, and I think she's really felt the burden of that role and that mantel. And I think, as a player, when you're standing over the putts, and you're thinking what's everybody going to think if I miss this? I think that's very difficult to bear. I think that's why she gets so nervous on the putts, that's why that's happened. You're thinking about what everybody else is expecting of you. Everybody else's expectations combined with your own, I think it's just so difficult. PAIGE MACKENZIE: There's something that's been so calculated about how she's gone about her business of doing that, whether it's always feeling she's trying to give the right answer to a question or do the right thing or always sign the right amount of autographs. And there was something that happened this summer with everything that she went through where you saw this vulnerability where she wasn't trying to be anybody except herself. This is where I'm at. This is who I am. And to me, the authenticity of who she has become now, I think she could have one of the best seasons because she's so now being, what appears to the outside, very true to herself. I feel like we're seeing who she really is, and it's not perfect, and that's okay. KAREN STUPPLES: And I think our definition of success for her should be very different than her definition of success for her. I think she has to define what that is for herself with her own goals and what she wants to achieve for herself personally, and it is going to be different to what we expect and what we want from her because there's nothing that any of us would want more than to see her win week after week. But our expectations and our desires and our wants should be very different from what she -- well, not very different, but she needs to have her own and not trying to live up to ours. Q. Michelle Wie, she does that, doesn't she? KAREN STUPPLES: Yes, she does. Absolutely, 100 percent. Q. Do you think that new confidence in herself for Lexi could translate into new confidence in putting? Putting is so much just a confidence thing? KAREN STUPPLES: I think it's how much importance she places on it will determine how well she does with it. If her goals are to walk off that golf course content with herself, knowing that she did everything she possibly could, then she'll start making the putts. It's like, as soon as you start trying to make them, as soon as you start trying to make it happen, that's when they start missing, you walk off the course disgruntled, unhappy, and then it sort of snowballs. I think, if she can do that -- now she's definitely making strides in that department -- she'll be there, there's no doubt. And then it becomes this she'll start to enjoy the winning. She'll start to enjoy coming to the media center again. She'll start to enjoy all the trappings of being successful as opposed to dreading it. Q. Do you think she still dreads coming in here? KAREN STUPPLES: Yeah. JERRY FOLTZ: Has anybody had to face harder questions the last two or three years than Lexi? I don't think anybody has. Q. So every year we have someone who fans probably don't know who end up being a surprise, go back Brooke Henderson, In Gee Chun, Jin Young Ko. Who do you think is going to be this year? KAREN STUPPLES: Gaby Lopez. Gaby Lopez. I think she had a breakout last year by winning. She's in the field this week. She is more than capable of having a ton of birdies on the golf course at any given time. She swings pretty pure, hits the ball a good distance. She's pretty well put together. And I think just the fact that she had that nice little breakout win will give her a little bit of confidence to say, hey, look, I did well. I've got this. I am able to be a champion on the LPGA Tour, and I think that she's a player to watch this year. I also think that one of the Kordas will win a major. Bold statements. PAIGE MACKENZIE: I think there's going to be an incredibly strong rookie class from a lot of NCAA recent grads or recent people that left. It's probably the strongest that I can think of in recent history that's immediately left collegiate golf and gone to the LPGA Tour. So that's what I'm looking forward to in '19, seeing if there's going to be one or two wins from that class of people that we've seen now that we cover in NCAA golf like a Fassi or Kupcho or Stephenson. JERRY FOLTZ: Two years ago we had a thing on our air early in the year, all of us talking heads, and we had to pick rookie of the year. I picked Brooke Pancake. I thought she's a phenomenal player. I watched her play, and she does so many things right. It didn't pan out too well. One of our announcers picked Ariya Jutanugarn, who wasn't even a member of the Tour. He thought she was that much better than everybody else that she was going to be rookie of the year, even though she wasn't even a member. And if she hadn't fallen off the tee in Rochester, she probably would have been. So I'm a horrible guy at telling you. Q. Who picker her? JERRY FOLTZ: Believe it or not, Terry Gannon. PAIGE MACKENZIE: Jeongeun Lee is going to be tough to beat on the rookie of the year bet. She's got incredible back story, if anybody wants to dig into it, on her family and her father. JERRY FOLTZ: There was a player that very same year who was a rookie named Marina Stuetz. When she hit a driver on the range, you stopped in her tracks. It was a beautiful, beautiful golf swing. She hit it like Ann van dam. It was ridiculous. As a matter of fact, Kurt Byrum was going to cover his first LPGA event that year at Kingsmill, I believe, and he was walking on the range and stopped and watched. And Judy Rankin, who knows golf better than all of us put together, seen more than all of us put together, Judy Rankin said on the air, if this young lady doesn't win a tournament, I shouldn't have my job. We remind Judy of that every week, usually on a daily basis when she's raving about a new young player. We don't know what Marina Stuetz is doing now. She's not playing competitive golf anymore. She was that good. There's no way to tell. To me, it all comes down to self-belief, and no matter what your amateur success is -- and Paige knows this so well from covering the NCAAs and golf -- PAIGE MACKENZIE: I thought you were going to say because of my career. JERRY FOLTZ: You had a great career. The amateur success at the highest level doesn't translate, automatically translate to success at the pro level. Especially in women's golf where amateur careers are almost nonexistent anymore. They turn pro as teenagers, a lot of them. So there's no way to tell. It all comes down to self-belief, that intangible, because all of them can play golf or else they wouldn't be here. KAREN STUPPLES: I look back at some of the best amateur golfers certainly when I was a youngster in the UK growing up didn't actually ever make it even to play professional golf, and they were so dominant players. A good example would be Silvia Cavalleri. Yes, she won a tournament, but she was never the player I thought she was going to be. I think about Kelli Kuehne. She was dominant. JERRY FOLTZ: Kelli Kuehne, Beth Bauer, the Song, Huang, Lu kids, the landscape of those who didn't make it is pretty well littered. KAREN STUPPLES: And there's an intangible that somebody has within themselves that comes out when there's more on the line than just making that putt, when there is paying a bill or paying your caddie or knowing how to get to the next tournament. Some people have that within them to deal with that internal pressure and some people don't. Q. Big difference when mom and dad are paying and you're paying. JERRY FOLTZ: And there's no way to teach it. You can't teach that self-belief. Q. More in a general sense, how do you see this 2019 season going? Last year there were ten first time winners, but Ariya still managed to be such a dominant player. Nine American winners last year, but more in a general sense, how do you see the season? JERRY FOLTZ: A Jutanugarn will win a major. KAREN STUPPLES: I think in general the depth on the LPGA Tour is remarkable now from where it was, say, in 2000. I think I look through the numbers, scoring average, in the year 2000 nobody had a scoring average of less than 70. Last year I think it was like -- I didn't look at the end of year numbers, but certainly before the CME, it was something like 13 or 14 players had a scoring average of less than 70. And the numbers to have a scoring average of less than 72 were even more staggering. I think it was something like maybe 20 in 2000 to like 90-something this past year. So the depth of the tour and how they're scoring is just getting deeper and deeper and the quality of players getting better. So winning every week is getting harder because more players have opportunities to win. When I first came on Tour, people had maybe ten players that could win week in and week out. Then you throw in somebody like me who would win every once in a while or whoever, but this year on the LPGA Tour, it's anybody's game to go out and win. The quality of golf is so good, and they're just improving. The technique's improving, the quality of coaching that the players are getting is improving as well. And I think that's what you're seeing, just not only is the Tour popularity increasing, the amount of time we're seeing golf on TV, but you're also seeing the quality of play increasing exponentially. And that's nothing against what happened when I first came on Tour or when Paige or when Nancy Lopez first came on Tour, I think it's because we're seeing the LPGA players worldwide. We're getting the very, very best players from across the world playing golf here. That's why you're seeing this improvement in play. PAIGE MACKENZIE: I also feel like it's stabilized. From that, I mean like when is the last time you've seen a dozen players over the age of 30 on this Tour? This Tour actually feels like it's getting older, and it stabilized from a fan's perspective. It's the same as I saw five years ago. When I got on Tour, a huge shift in turnover, a massive amount of turnover from, say, 2007 to 2012. There was no 40-somethings. They were on when I got there, but then off. I think there was one tournament when I counted those over the age of 30, and it was less than ten in a particular field. I feel like now you're seeing that it's somewhat stabilized where you're seeing these players that have been out here for 10, 11, 12 years still competing at a high level, which, again, from a viewer's perspective, a fan's perspective, I think it's good because that was the one thing I felt like was actually hurting the LPGA. This new blood was great, but you never got a chance to know them before they were off Tour again. JERRY FOLTZ: Mine's not as scientific, but it falls along with the same point. My first year out here was eight or nine years ago. In the first tournament as a new -- I covered some LPGA events, but as a full-time LPGA on course guy was Kia Classic at City of Industry, and it was amazing crowds, and Sandra Gal beat former No. 1 Jiyai Shin on the final hole. I got to that same tournament the next year, and I looked around and realized I knew a dozen, maybe two dozen players on the LPGA Tour. I follow the TV groups Thursday and Friday and then the last groups Saturday and Sunday. It was the same players week after week. Might have been a change of face here and there, but might have been 20 players I followed that whole year. And then last year I remember coming out to founders cup and realized the previous year I followed probably 70 or 80 different players. The depth is way different than it was last year. In Karen's stats, she researched it not too long ago to prove it out. I think that's healthy for golf. Do we all want, does the American TV audience want a dominant American star, a Tiger Woods of the LPGA? Of course they do. Does the Asian TV audience, which is more lucrative for the LPGA Tour, want a dominant Asian player? Of course they do. But I think the overall health of it is in the depth right now and in the amazing golf that these young ladies play, not so much young all the time anymore, on a day in and day out basis. Then you see the stories that kind of transcend just the LPGA audience, someone like Angela Stanford finally winning that Major in that emotional, probably the greatest picture of the year, wrapped in the American flag looking at the sky. We still get stories like that from time to time that really, when you're invested in it, really make you feel warm. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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