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CME GROUP TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 22, 2019

Mike Whan

Naples, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by LPGA Commissioner, Mike Whan, for his annual State of the Tour. Mike, this week has always been special for women's golf, and we've always enjoyed a really special TOUR Championship. But it feels a little different with the increased purse to $5 million and $1.5 million up for grabs to anyone in the field. What sense have you gotten from players and everyone of the different feel that they have this week?

MIKE WHAN: Please don't talk to me. It feels more like a major. You know, it has a chance to be life-changing, right? Somebody out there is going to be the first one to take the historical biggest-ever check. My wife mentioned it to me the other day. She said, you know, it just feels a little bit more major this year, and I thought that was interesting from somebody who doesn't travel as much as you and I. Yeah, there's an anxiety, there's a little bit of an edge to the week, and I think that's exciting.

By the way, I don't know why we schedule these the morning after the Rolex Awards dinner, but this might be the slowest I've ever spoken (laughter.)

Q. We had some exciting news this morning as the 2020 schedule was released. What are some of the key highlights that you're really excited about as we look forward to 2020?
MIKE WHAN: I'm excited that Beth Ann Nichols didn't publish it before I did this year, first time in my tenure, so thank you. You probably knew it in July but didn't say it, so I appreciate it. I'm excited about a lot. First it sets a new historical high mark for purses and TV. Both, I think, are important, not just one or the other. Four times playing in an event I can drive to, that's a home run for me. I'm really excited to show off Boca Rio and the Pelican Club.

It's great to have two more events in Florida. But both of those golf courses, I think for a lots of Floridians -- even if you live in Boca, you may not have been inside Boca Rio, and Boca Rio is a gem. And Pelican was just completely redone. And so I've been to Bel Air and I've been to Tampa many times. I'd never been there when I went there for the media day. It's just special, I mean. And people who go will see and the players definitely will.

So it's not just two more events in Florida. It's two events in Florida that I think are really going to be great for the players but even for the Floridians and fans of our Tour that probably haven't seen these two incredible venues. Blue Bay has typically been the week before this. And we knew when we moved this a $1.5 million winner's check and 5 million bucks, that might be tough on Blue Bay. We've decided long ago that we didn't want any more limited field events early in the year in Asia, so we asked Blue Bay to consider being a full field event, which is expensive but really cool of them.

So an event that will have 100 of our players, and I think 25 or 30 Chinese LPGA playing with us, so that's a neat co-sanctioned event and an opportunity for both tours. And then I'm just really excited about how many people just continue to step up and move their purse. Last year we had a bunch of tournaments move. This year we had a bunch move. You start thinking about majors like Evian at 4.1 and KPMG Women's PGA at 4.3 and AIG Women's Open at 4.5 and, obviously, the U.S. Women's Open and this, we've got some pretty big moments on Tour.

THE MODERATOR: Talk about all these different increases, all the things we've seen over the past 10 years now. I know you're getting -- this week marks the end of your 10th season as LPGA Commissioner, and 10 years is usually a really good time to reflect back and look at what has been done. What are you most proud of when you look back, and have you really taken some time to reflect and look over what has happened on the LPGA over the past 10 years.

MIKE WHAN: Well, Roberta forced me to take time a couple weeks ago and she said, Don't just say your thoughts. Write them down. And I started writing and then it turned into more and more, and you guys all tried to edit me down a bit, but I couldn't help myself. But I'm really proud of two things more than anything else. I'm proud of the team we have. I really think we have a talented team. I said this to the board in a Monday morning meeting: It doesn't matter how long Mike Whan works at the LPGA. We're in a good place. I don't work as hard as I used to. You certainly know that. Because I don't have to. We really have a quality crew.

And I think that matters, and I'm really proud of how -- whenever we're done and we hand the baton to the next group that can run faster than us, we are going to give them a bigger lead than we had when we got the baton. Because I think what's happening in women's golf -- not just in the U.S., but all around the world -- in fact, all around the world is even ore impressive than what's happening in the U.S. But the amount of young girls entering this game, the percentage of the future of this game that's got a female face on it, that's -- I know from our founders, and I definitely know this from Marilynn Smith, of all the things we were doing, that's what they were most proud of.

THE MODERATOR: We announced earlier this week your contract extension, just a long-term extension. As we look forward, you had a letter to members, and some people have even called it a little bit of a battle cry. It looked at what you're trying to do for the vision of the next 10 years. What do you really think are the biggest things that can be accomplished as you look forward to the future?

MIKE WHAN: Well, it wasn't meant to be a battle cry. My pen just moved -- actually I started by just "Hey, Siri," and I started talking, and then when I realized Siri couldn't keep up, I started writing. The reality of it is there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic. When I first took this job I made a comment to the board -- this is weird to say now because the Cubs have won the World Series -- but I said to the board, I feel like I'm the manager of the Chicago Cubs. I look at our lineup, I look at our talent of our players and talent of our staff. We're good enough to win, but it seems like in the clubhouse everybody expects something will go wrong at some point during the season. Sorry for the Cubs, but I grew up a Chicago Cubs fan and that explains from year 5 to 45 for me.

But then the Cubs proved it, and I think we've proved it, too. And I just said if we start having wins here and those wins turn into belief and that belief makes outside people pay attention to what's going on, there's no reason not to be on a really long run here at the LPGA. So, one, I'm proud of the fact that we've achieved that. I think we've built the wins, we've built the momentum. There's outside people taking a look at what we're doing, and I think it's important.

But it really does frustrate me when people say to me, you know, what are you going to do next now that you did what you came to do at the LPGA? It would be embarrassing for me if this was as good as it gets. It would be embarrassing for the LPGA. This can't be where women's golf plateaus, and if it plateaus here, shame on all of us. They didn't bring me in to bounce back to 34 tournaments and X number of TV.

Well, we decided we were going to try to fulfill the mission of the LPGA, and fulfilling of the mission of the LPGA was not a number of tournaments. It wasn't a number of stops. It wasn't how many countries televise our event. It was putting women on a platform that had never been seen before. I'm not sure we're there yet. And there's certainly a long way to go to -- but some really cool signs. This week, really cool signs. Aon, really cool sign. The fact that so many, not just majors, but so many non-majors are raising their purse, I am not calling -- sorry, players -- but I am not calling every tournament in the off-season saying, I need a couple hundred thousand more out of you. That's not how I do business, and I know that probably bums out some of my athletes. But those sponsors are doing the right thing just because they're doing the right thing. That's not being driven by me. I don't remember what your question was, but now I'm on a roll. You've got me on my battle cry.

THE MODERATOR: I'm going to open it up for questions from the media.

Q. You just talked around essentially the opportunity with the LET. Where are you on that? Is there a timetable? Is there a vision for what you're thinking about there?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, the timetable is literally right now. Tomorrow I leave and I fly to Spain. Meet with the players on Tuesday night, and my first meeting -- my first LET meeting. So I'm not sure how they feel about that, but they'll get a chance to hear from me on Tuesday night. Between the LPGA board and the LET board have both unanimously voted that we would like to move forward with a joint venture between the two of us. But at the end of the day, the LET -- no different from the LPGA -- is run by its players, so the players will get the final vote on that.

I think the opportunity here is unique. Together -- it's literally a 50/50 joint venture that we're proposing, six members of a board from our side and six members of a board from their side. And all proceeds stay in Europe, can't take any dollars out. We can put money into the LET, but we can't take money back out, which is -- which I asked my board to support. I want to make sure the European Tour players know that this is not some American growth strategy. I'm not expecting to make money at the LET, but I do think we can provide -- the way I said it to my board is: If you read the mission of the LPGA, it's to provide women the opportunity to pursue their dreams in the game of golf, period. That's the whole statement. As I said to our board, I don't see a boundary or a fence around that statement. It doesn't say in America, doesn't say in North America, doesn't say in countries where you think the opportunity is greatest.

So I said to my board, I think we should do this because we can. We really can. And I think it's our responsibility. Our founders would have done it if they would have had this ability, so why shouldn't we? And I think by coming together and providing some pathway to the LPGA -- and that pathway will be expanded over time as we learn more together -- but by providing a pathway, we engage country federations throughout Europe who have money to spend on women's sport, but they need a -- they need to make sure that that path can lead to Olympic athletes and people that can live on the top of the Rolex world rankings. And they know that path to the LPGA is required to do that.

I don't care if any player from the LPGA takes the path. I have never asked a player from another Tour to come to the LPGA. I've never been bummed out when a player doesn't come. But by providing that opportunity for those who want to take it, I think we can engage a whole 'nother level of European-based events for the LET to play. And it feels very much like 2009 to me on the LET. What we really need to do is let players play and play often. We'll figure out how to make more money and have better TV in time. If you guys go back into the history on my events in 2010 and '11, we weren't setting the world on fire on purses and TV. But now those events have become big, important, financial.

So I hope it can work out. At the end of the day, if this isn't what the European Tour and the European Tour player want, I'm totally fine with that. We feel like it's our responsibility to try. If it turns out to be nothing -- there won't be any animosity. I'm not offended by that. It's their decision, and I think we're going to put a really good case together on how this can be impactful. But if people feel that that's justa little bit too either threatening or too American or too Mike Whan, any of those things, that would be fine if it doesn't work out.

Q. How will that path sit alongside the Symetra Tour? Is it a direct path to the LPGA or is it a path to the Symetra Tour?
MIKE WHAN: Not initially. Initially, we would provide acces to Q-Series, to the final stage of Q-school. I think for me, we have to make sure that there are enough full field events played over a full season so that -- I didn't go back to the LPGA board and ask for more cards on Symetra until we built a full season of full field events. So you have to beat 100-plus players 22 times on Symetra to prove that you're at the top of the game. What I can't do is provide cards to somebody if half the season is 30-player events or less or you're not playing that often. So I think the responsibility is on us first -- meaning us, the suits -- to create a schedule that's significant enough with significant amount of playing opportunities, and you have to beat enough players to show yourself worthy of direct access. But I think in the short-term, if you can make it to Q-Series, you've probably got a 50/50 shot or something. I don't know if those are the exact odds of Q-series, but it's probably close. So if we could take their top players and give them that opportunity, they can come or not come. And then I think it's just something like with Symetra. In my 10 years, we've gone from no cards to one card to three cards to 10 cards to no real access to final stage Q-Series to 25 players in access. That's all come first with creating a Tour that creates a season-long qualifier and then you provide the reward.

I think we need to do the same thing with the LET. We need to provide the season-long qualifier. I also think, different from Symetra, I view the LET as a Tour that people can probably go and play for life if we build that Tour the way we can build it. I'm not sure if that's a realistic short- or long-term goal on Symetra, but I think it's a real realistic, even short-term goal on the LET.

Q. We do these twice a year and television comes up every time. Reports this week are the PGA TOUR negotiations are close to being completed, and you have the PGA TOUR negotiating the LPGA television rights. How are those two facts intertwined, and are you close to having any sort of television deal?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, when the PGA TOUR deal is done, the LPGA Tour deal will be done. Yeah, we're completely intertwined. It's the same deal for the most part, although obviously different benefits, et cetera. Yeah, I don't know if it's close to being done, but certainly deep into the process. But yeah, we're as intertwined on that deal as two entities can be.

Q. I'm just curious when you first took this job how long you thought you might stay, and when it truly became a passion?
MIKE WHAN: Let's just see if my wife is back there. So when I took the job originally, the board suggested a four-year term. I suggested a three-year term. My point to them at the time was -- we were going through a tough -- they were going through a tough time. And I said, Don't let me at the end of the two years tell you that we're so close to the turnaround. And at the end of the day, have a short leash on whoever you put in terms of commissioner, because you don't have time to -- and so I said, if I haven't made a significant difference in 24 months, let's agree that the next year will be my last year.

I don't think long-term. I mean, I know you can chuckle now. I think long-term is three years, and I think even a three-year plan, you've got to write in pencil because the world just changes too much. Streaming wasn't a thing. High definition was the big talk of TV when I started. It's amazing how fast things move.

I made a three-year commitment when I started. We kind of rolled that into a four-year commitment after the second year, then I extended essentially through '20. If I'm being honest with you, I never expected to be here in '20 even when I signed the deal to be here in '20. I just wasn't sure that -- my job is like a head coach. One day I'm going to come to work and the name on the door is going to be different, and I just won't know that they changed the name on the door. But that's okay.

I think you guys know this isn't an act. I love this. I love these athletes. I love my teammates, and if they want me to be here in a head coaching role, I'm going to keep coming in as a head coaching role. When they're done with me, I'm not going to be offended by that. And as I've said to our board many times, you're going to find somebody younger, faster, and more caffeinated than me, and when you do, just give them the baton.

I feel comfortable now that whenever it ends, it ends. I've never done the job to keep the job. I just think that's a terrible way to keep your job. I've done a lot of things to lose the job, and so far they haven't taken it from me. So I feel like if you keep taking risks -- I've told the board which I first started, I promise you you'll never have somebody make more mistakes than me. But if at the end of the each year, you just count up the number of times we got on base versus the number of times we've struck out, you'll like the batting average. You'll just hate of number of times I strike out painfully in public, and you guys usually write about those times. So it's okay.

Like I said, I'm comfortable with it. I'm going to keep doing it as long as I'm passionate about it and as long as they want me to come back.

Q. In your memo, you mentioned that 95 percent of the corporate dollars in sports are going to male sporting events. I know "Act Like a Founder" was a mantra you established early in your tenure. What's kind of the mantra to change that, that you're telling your staff or what the game plan on how to make it more than a value statement?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, it's called live your values. Like don't -- if you're going to say something is a value, it has to be involved in everything you do. I've had this conversation with a lot of CEOs. Some like it and some hate it, which is -- don't call it a value statement unless you're going to hold that mirror up to everything. So you can't just decide it's a value statement and it really works for this employee meeting, but it doesn't work for this marketing meeting, it doesn't work for this sponsorship discussion. If that's what's important to you as a leader, then it needs to be important to you in everything you do. My early days, it would be frustrating to walk into a boardroom and read the company value statement hanging on the wall and walk in and realize that's not the value that's coming out of that meeting.

It doesn't mean that I'm right or wrong. It's just my point is if you think that one of the most important things you stand for is sending in a quality message, then you can't just send it in an internal memo. You can't spend $400 million that impacts the world and think that's not your largest value reflection.

So I think you've got to live your values. At the end of the day, that doesn't mean everybody is going to agree with me. In fact, I can tell you that 95 percent of the companies disagree with me evidently. But I do think it's coming. I've met investors in the last four years, mega-investors, the people that back companies, not just start-up companies, but when you need money, the people that -- you know, there's investors that will only invest now in companies that have these kind of values reflected in everything they do. When money stops flowing to you because you're not walking the talk, the world is going to change. And by the way, definitely not an American-only thing. That theme is running through the world. It may be at different stages, it may be different in this country versus that country, but that topic is alive in every country in the world. Just like I said, just at different stages of the evolution.

Probably more than anything else, that gives me confidence in the future. Because if we unlock a couple of $500 million marketing budgets that have never really looked at female golf as anything other than viewership numbers and cable TV and hospitality, and they start thinking about what it really means to their employees, John Veimeyer said it last night. I remember when he told me, when he sent the memo out to KPMG employees about this thing, he was floored how many female executives sent him a text message back saying thank you. He said, Mike, we sponsor a ton of stuff. Nobody from our company has ever said thank you. And how many dads of daughters said this matters. Find me a CEO who wouldn't find that a powerful day.

Q. There's a chance you may have been talking so fast this went right over my head. Did we ever say how long this extension was?
MIKE WHAN: We did not.

Q. Can you?
MIKE WHAN: I cannot.

Q. Why?
MIKE WHAN: I don't know. I will find out for you. I know it's a long-term extension. I don't really know if we put an end year on it. The good news is they can get rid of me any time they want and they don't have to pay me some -- the way I've structured any deal with the LPGA -- and quite frankly any deal any place I've been is -- when it's time for me to go, I don't want you to feel like you owe me three years of income because of some of some meeting we had some year. That's a terrible way to run a company that every dollar goes back to the members.

So we've got an agreement on how I'm going to get paid and how I'm going to run and how I can run my team for long-term. That agreement doesn't require me under some penalty to be -- inability to walk away early, and it doesn't give them any penalty when I do something really stupid, which is likely, and it's time to move on.

Q. I'm kind of curious how you present a message, there's a lot of an increasingly louder drum beat about closing a gap in pay, focusing on that without losing sight of a chance to celebrate how far you've come. How do you balance the two?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, we talked about this in a few player meetings. At the end of the day, the biggest issue in the gap is something we own, not somebody else. It's not a social issue. That's for other people to talk about. The biggest problem in the gap is we deliver a fourth of the eyeballs of the PGA TOUR, and we get about a fourth of the revenue of the PGA TOUR when we sit across from somebody who's a title sponsor. I've written too many checks in my life to too many sports to know how that goes, and I get it. That's a real reality.

I wish we started at the same starting platform when we decide how many eyeballs we deliver. As I've said many times, give me 39 weeks of paid network TV and then ask me how my eyeballs compare. We've never had that opportunity in 70 years. But battle cry aside, I think the reality is that's the first big break. I've said this -- and Minnie's heard me say this. Kelly's heard me say this. I'm sure your mom hates it when I call you Minnie.

I've said this many times. Pay gap is going to close in women's golf just like it's going to close in women's sports. It's not going to close because some ad agency comes up with a spreadsheet that shows you the analysis of -- that's not how social movements happen. It's going to happen because a couple people step up and say, you know what, this is the right thing to do. I can afford to do it, and by God, I'm going to do it. And I think we're going to see the same thing happen in golf. Is that going to happen in a year or two or 10? I don't know. But I have zero doubt that's going to happen, and it won't be because of the new analysis run on branding numbers.

I get it. I can't handle No. 2. I can't even understand when or how that's going to happen, so I'm not going to waste any time. I've got to focus on No. 1, which is that's on us. I always say to the players: That's on us. We want to have revenue from these folks, we've got to deliver more for the revenue so we've got to go work on that. Let the social movement take care of itself.

Q. The other thing I was curious about is if you get more and more women into the game from all corners of the world and this becomes the ultimate destination and the competition gets stronger than ever and it's getting harder than ever to keep your card, what interest would you have in seeing the purses on the Symetra Tour go up as kind of a holding ground to get your card back? And would you want them to get high enough so that people get comfortable out there or keep it at a level where it's just sustainable to get to where you want to go?
MIKE WHAN: That's a good question and I'm glad you asked because I should have probably said this at some point. I have never, will never, nor ever allow somebody else to cap purses on anything. There's just no way to stay commissioner if one of your meetings finishes with: Please just keep the Symetra purses under 200,000. I mean, that's a great way to wind up a retired commissioner.

So I mean, it's funny. Somebody from the LET said to me, a player -- not this week, but a few weeks ago -- who was over here playing and she said, I hear you want to cap the purses of the LET. I said, Have you just met me? I don't do caps. That's not the goal. So I have zero desire to cap the level of money that's available to Symetra. If we're going to really raise the level of Symetra, we've got to raise the level of the LPGA so that we can invest more in Symetra. We've got to be able to afford to put Symetra on TV. If we can put Symetra on TV, we could double all the purses on Symetra. But we've got to some up with $10 million to put the Symetra on TV.

So it will all be part of success, right? With success, we'll raise all the boats of the LPGA. Zero desire to not have a Symetra that's sustainable. I don't know if that'll happen in Mike Whan's time as commissioner, but it'll certainly happen as we grow and it becomes the -- I think if you jump forward 10 years and you say there's a couple of three tours in the world that the only path to the LPGA is through those tours, those tours will get strong pretty quick just like Symetra has. We've gone from an average of $78,000 a week to 178 in the last -- five or six years, Mike? Is he still here? Are those numbers ballpark correct? Yeah, close enough for me. Do a Google check on that.

Q. You just addressed this, but to go further with the gender pay, is there a difference between what's fair versus equal pay, and how do you know when you're at fair?
MIKE WHAN: Is there a difference between fair -- I'm not that educated.

Q. A difference between equal pay and just what is fair in the gap?
MIKE WHAN: Well, at the risk of being quoted by all of you guys -- I should know better. When I started in work in the '80s -- I'm going to go a different path. This will probably get me in just as much trouble.

When I started work in the late '80s, it was okay in an office place to say, Yeah, but she might pregnant some day, so we promoted him because we know he's not going to leave. Can you imagine saying that today? That was not that -- you probably think that's a long time ago, but for me, that felt like almost yesterday. You know, and that was considered fair. Well, that's fair. At the end of the day, she's going to have to take more time off to be a mom. That's embarrassing to explain to my kids today. They would look at me and go, that happened in a meeting? I've been part of those meetings.

So what's fair is catching up to what's fair. I mean, I think the world is kind of waking up to what's fair. Like I said, I get it. At some point as any CEO, CMO, CFO, you've got to sit across a room from a bunch of people whose job it is to assess the money you spend relative to the return you get. That delivers one-fourth of the PGA TOUR purses. Enough said. That's reality. Our problem. If somebody wakes up and says, you know what, I wouldn't -- Terry Duffy. Terry Duffy called me and said, Mike, I want a $1.5 winner's check. And I said, Terry, how are we going to -- I start doing the Mike Whan. I want to make sure that you can do this and support it, and he goes, I don't need your support. I wouldn't pay for the same work a man versus a woman, and I'm sick of watching TV every weekend and watching a man win $1.5 million. At my event, a woman is going to win $1.5 million.

I didn't send him data, I didn't ask him for a brand analysis. He didn't send four agencies to do a review. He just said, in my world, that's how it's done, and now it's done that way. That's what's changing. That's what's coming. There wasn't an analysis that went with that. I'm not sure everybody does that. I'm not sure anybody needs to do that. But if you think that's not coming, you didn't live through the last same 30 years that I did because that's here in a lot of places, and it's certainly going to come to the LPGA.

Q. How big of an effect do you think golf being back in the Olympics has been on your Tour?
MIKE WHAN: Well, for you guys that follow us regularly, sorry, because you've got to hear this again. But it's funny, golf in the Olympics, there's this thing called the Olympic movement. I used to think Olympic movement talked about the week of the Olympics, but the Olympic movement is the four years that lead into the Olympics. So I spend a lot of time outside the United States, as I think you know, and outside of the United States they only consider two kinds of sports, Olympic sports and non-Olympic sports, and when we were a non-Olympic sport, we were considered elite and premium and only rich people play and as a result most countries didn't even like the game in places we went.

10 years later, 100 percent different. I mean, 100 percent different. I've said this many times to the group that follows us, if you're an eight-year-old young girl growing up with an interest and ability to play golf at an elite level, there's a lot of places, 100 countries today where you could actually have those opportunities where probably 10 years ago you wouldn't even be given those opportunities. Coaches, nutritionists, golf courses, driving ranges, just access to competition. I really pin all of that on the Olympics.

I'd love to take credit for all of that and tell you what we're doing is really changing the world. But the Olympic movement is real, and it has moved women's golf. I don't know if Jay and Keith and the others feel the same on the men's side. I don't really spend much time on the men's side. But I can tell you on the women's side, it's a game-changing experience. I can knock down the countries we visit, and in those countries the way they feel about women's golf is crazy.

It's funny, after having breakfast with my wife, and I opened up USA Today and we were on the third page, and she says, Isn't it cool to be in the sports section. I said, you've got to come with me to Thailand one time. She goes, What do you mean? I said, We are the sports section in Thailand. When the best women in the world show up in Thailand, they literally shut down the rest of sports to talk about the LPGA being in town.

I can tell you those examples in a lot of other countries. And so as good as things are feeling for the future of the game for women in America, they're getting dwarfed by our countries that are really opening doors that weren't open before. I think more than anything else, that's the Olympic movement.

Q. Given the fact that you have U.S. LPGA now having a good conversation with the LET -- is that European Tour?
MIKE WHAN: Ladies European Tour.

Q. And you have extended your commissioner job for a long time, but how do you see the relationship with the Japanese Tour, Japanese LPGA? 15 years ago the Japanese LPGA had almost vanished, but after Ai Miyazato came up, now the Japanese LPGA is doing a very good job. In the long-term do you see USA LPGA and the Japanese LPGA will be the competitor, or are you going to have some kind of good relationship with that Tour? How do you see it?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, I'm actually -- I actually view the Japanese LPGA as a gold standard. I think it's impressive. There was 36 or something events when I started in 2010. There's 36 events now. Seems like their schedule and their sponsors never change. I'd like that. It's a really -- the fans embrace women's golf in Japan like they embrace women's golf in Korea and Thailand and Taiwan. It's really impressive to watch. At least in my 10 years it's been nothing but a great relationship between us and the Japanese LPGA. I like the people there that run it. I like the players that come over and play on the LPGA. We've seen players kind of go back and forth between our two tours. I don't think they recruit. My players don't recruit their players. I love the fact that women have those opportunities.

I think if more women had the opportunity you have in Japan, the game would be better, so if you're a young Japanese player and you dream of playing high-level professional golf, you've got two choices. You can stay at home and play -- I don't know if my numbers are right, 35, 36 times a year, probably take a train to most events because they play, I think, Friday through Sunday, and that would be a pretty good life. Make good money, have good sponsorships. If you want to take a chance at something significantly larger, you can come play on the LPGA and get used to a suitcase.

But what a great option that would be. If we had 10 Japanese LPGAs in 10 different countries, it would be pretty good for the game. I love the fact that you can win the AIG Women's British and come or stay, and either one would be a good financial choice. That doesn't happen in a lot of places. It happens in Korea, happens in Japan, happens in America. I wish it happened in more countries.

Yeah, we enjoy a relationship with them. We enjoy our tournament together. I think because a lot of people who run the Japanese LPGA even have spent time on the LPGA, they're known entities, so for me to pick up the phone and call Hirosha-san it's pretty easy, and vice versa.

Q. Mike, this is a special week. We see lots of special moments. Is there one thing that will stick out to you just from what you've seen over the course of the week so far?
MIKE WHAN: Are you doing this so I have to talk about Carlota? The Carlota thing was powerful. I said to somebody at the Rolex thing last night, so here's a young woman sitting on a stage where she just won a million bucks, and the first thing she said when -- I don't know if you talked to her or Christina, I can't remember who interviewed her, but she said, What's it feel like to win the million bucks, and before she said anything, she said, Well, I might get the check this week, it's women's golf that's winning this week. I would love to hear that from an NBA player or NFL player. That's powerful stuff.

I played golf with Carlota here five or six years ago in a pro-am. She had nothing on her bag, nothing on her hat, nothing on her shirt. She was a quality golfer. She'd been on Tour for a few years. She was a good friend, and I remember just thinking, I've got work to do, because this is a kid who's good enough to be out here all the time, and she's got nothing sponsored. We shouldn't talk about finances, but I remember thinking when I was playing with her, I wonder how she's doing financially on this. She spends a long time away from home. She never bought a house in the States. Maybe she doesn't want one but maybe she can't afford one. So I know that was life changing, and for that to be life changing and for her to think that this is really bigger statement about women's golf than it is about Carlota Ciganda, that's why you drive on.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you so much for the time. Thanks, everyone.

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