KRAFT NABISCO CHAMPIONSHIP

March 27, 2002

Ty Votaw

MODERATOR: Welcome, everybody. We'd like to welcome you all to the State of the Tour press conference. We are pleased to welcome you all here today. I'm going to hand the microphone over to Commissioner Votaw to lead us in the State of the TOUR. Following his speech presentation we will open it up to questions and answers. We will have a microphone roaming the room for those of you who would be kind enough to use it, just for sound and things like that.

Thank you.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Good morning everybody and thank you for coming to the 2002 State of the Association address. Over the next four hours, I'm going to be giving you a complete history of the LPGA -- (laughter) -- give you a play-by-play of all of last year's tournaments with the bios of each winner; and then end with a hole-by-hole and club-by-club description of my Pro-Am yesterday. So I hope that you'll be here for the full four hours.

Actually I'm going to speak with you about the current and future health of the LPGA. I'm going to provide you a brief overview of the LPGA long-term strategic planning we shared with our players a few weeks ago in Phoenix and share what I think are some exciting new initiatives which will be implemented throughout the year in support of the long-term strategic plan and will result in the future growth of the LPGA.

Over the last four to six months, many of you in your editorial comments have offered your own take on the State of the LPGA TOUR. Some have been very positive. Some have not. And now like Paul Harvey, it's my turn to give you the rest of the story, my assessment of where I think the LPGA is today and where we think we are going to go in the future.

Overall the LPGA TOUR shows all of the signs of a healthy and strong organization. Purses are up, new sponsors are coming on board, quality of play is the highest it has ever been, and we have a pipeline being filled with new and exciting stars down the road. In looking at some of the traditional business indicators of the Tour's health and success, we can certainly look quality of our tournaments and say they are the best ever. Our purses are up. Our average purse this year is $1.9 million, highest in the organization history. 25 of our 31 events offer purses of $1 million or more, which is up from 12 in 2000. When I became Commissioner in '99, we wanted to have an average purse of at least $1 million by 2002; we accomplished that a year early in 2001. We wanted to have every event be at least $1 million by 2003, and with 25 of 31, we are well on our way to doing that. Half of our events have raised their purses from 2001 to 2002, in what I think you all would agree is a very tough economy, reflecting their confidence in the product of the LPGA.

Our television story is a very compelling one, as well. We continue to provide the best and most complete coverage of women's sports, in all of women's sports, with over 220 hours of television on all broadcast networks, ESPN, ESPN2, Golf Channel and Oxygen Media. 94 percent of our tournament we broadcast on network and cable television in 2002 network, 29 of 31, up from 2001.

As you know, it is a global tour with 89 international players from 21 different countries and our telecasts are broadcast to over 140 countries worldwide. The quality of golf is also at an all-time high. In 2001 we had 7 first-time winners, and we are very happy to welcome Laura Diaz into the first-time winners category in 2002 with her win last week at the Welch's/Cirlce K Championship. In 2001, five players had multiple wins, obviously led by Annika Sorenstam with eight, Se Ri Pak with five, Karrie Webb with three, two of which are majors and one being our TOUR championship. And Dorothy Delasin and Rosie Jones captured two victories each.

In 2002 we look forward to even more great golf, and the depth and breadth is at an all-time high and our rookie class is a shining example of the rising stars of our tour and the focus of our strategy with Beth Bauer, Natalie Gulbis, Stephanie Keever and Catherine Cartwright all have enormous potential and I think all will be very exciting to watch in the years to come.

Many of you know that over from the past couple of weeks, the story of Michelle Wie, a 12-year-old, not on our tour, who qualified for the Takefuji Classic, the youngest Monday qualifier in our history; she bested Natalie Gulbis who set it at 14 years of age, and she does at 12. Certainly, the Wongluekiet twins are here this week. I must tell you, I felt very old yesterday when they walked up to me and said, "Hello Mr. Votaw." I felt old beyond my years to have 15-year-old players with the talent they have call me "Mr. Votaw." But when you look at the Wongluekiet twins, the pipeline is felt, as well, with some very exciting stars down the road.

Some say you can judge a person or organization by the company they keep, and when it comes to the LPGA, we cannot be more proud in the company and global sponsors we have in the stable of tournament sponsors and other partners. Sponsors believe in the LPGA product and are making long-term commitments to us on a year-in and year-out basis, and our sponsor group is a veritable who's who of Fortune 500 companies.

New in 2002 is an event in Chicago, sponsored by Kellogg and it's Keebler division, and they have become a first-time sponsor by hosting an event at Stoneridge just outside of Chicago and are stepping up with a $1.2 million purse. In 2003, you have reported on the fact that Michelob Lite will sponsor a brand new event at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Virginia. Recently the Office Depot Championship raised their purse to become the 25th event on our schedule to have a $1 million purse this year, and world-class companies like Nabisco, State Farm, Corning, McDonald's and Wendy's have supported LPGA over the years and continue as we move forward with our new strategy. Marketing partners Merrill Lynch, Cheerios, State Farm are all utilizing the LPGA sports entertainment property and our tournament players to successfully market their products and services.

Golf has always had a rich tradition of charity, and that is no different on the LPGA TOUR. We are very proud of the fact that we have been able to raise close to $130 million since 1980, and next year, or next month, marks the 10th anniversary of our association with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation as our national official charity, and during the month of April to commemorate that anniversary our players will be wearing pink ribbons in support of that association.

As I think the foregoing reflects, the LPGA is stronger than ever, but in this highly-competitive sports entertainment marketplace, we must remain focused and protect the long-term health of the Tour while leveraging our growth opportunities, and we think the best way to do that is with our now strategic five-year plan. As many of you are aware, two weeks ago the LPGA had held its first ever Players Summit. I used this platform to roll out a five-year strategic plan for the organization and give all of the players a better idea of how the overall organization operates as a business. Because it was the first ever summit, some, media fans, industry insiders, and others suggested it may have been a desperate move on our part to gather the players under one roof to discuss the fate of the Tour.

Now, as I have shared with you and as you've heard over the last ten minutes, that's really the furthest thing from our business reality. The tour is on very, very solid footing. But as I conveyed to the players during the Summit, if we are to continue to be healthy and grow, we need to focus on one thing: Putting the fans first, and putting them first in every single business area that we operate in, in what I believe is a very marked change for the LPGA.

To better understand where we are headed as an organization you first need to know where we have been and where we come from relative to how we got to this five-year strategic plan. Fundamental to the five-year strategic plan is a year-and-a-half strategic assessment that we conducted and we examined ourselves and asked our constituents to talk to us about what they see to be the strengths and weaknesses of the LPGA. And we were confident in the knowledge after we went through that examination that the LPGA must change the way it views itself and conducts its future business in order to reach our full potential.

Three realities that emerged from this assessment over the course of that year-and-a-half period was a very real acknowledgment that we absolutely compete in a sports entertainment arena. It is no longer just about the business of professional golf; and we have said to our players and we are saying to you now and we will say to every constituent of the LPGA that it has to be more than just professional golf played by women. We can no longer become or consider ourselves the gender alternative to the PGA TOUR.

Second, we must and can grow our fan base.

Finally, we must develop a business structure that identifies develops and supports our future LPGA stars, fill the pipeline so this fundamental product development aspect of our five-year strategic plan takes hold. In other words, we have to fill the pipeline to support our future. We cannot and will not leave this to chance.

Many of you are already aware of the Player Summit; that's been reported on. As for the players, this was a very significant part of our strategic plan. But today I want to share with you the complete five-year strategic plan, which is centered around a Fans First philosophy. And by sharing with you the complete plan, I think you'll see the five points as one small portion of that overall plan, a very key part but a very small portion of the plan.

Put simply, Fans First is quite simple. Fans First is about improving the fans experience at every point of contact in the LPGA. Each business group is exploring and defining new initiatives that will improve the fan experience at every point of contact within our organization. As I mentioned, we are changing the way we conduct our business. I believe we are in a unique position in the sports entertainment marketplace, and professional golf allows to us manage our business realities using the available aspects within our organization, not looking outside the organization, but seeing what we have within our organization. We do have the R&D; we do have the distribution; we have the ability to create demand and the ability to stage usage from all primary business groups which we will talk about in a little bit. This allows to us control the business process from beginning to end and places the LPGA on even stronger footing in the future.

Now in your press kit, we have a graphic which should help you understand this to some degree. In a glance at it, you can see that the old business model of the LPGA -- it's an old business model, and I think this evolved over time. In our 52-year history, we focused on the membership and we focused on making the membership happy, successful, and trying to find the various indicators of business success for the membership was a focus of the organization for a very long time -- inaudible -- and business development all of them being focused on the fan will certainly result in all of the other business indicators coming forward. We have more fans and we will have more interest from sponsors who will want to pay more money to the LPGA and create higher purses, who will want to advertise in our telecast, deepen and strengthen our advertising base for our telecast; and ultimately have more coverage from you, the media; that is the circle of life, I think, to our five-year strategic plan.

Briefly going over some of these aspects of each of those four business groups, I will start with the professional development group led by Dr. Betsy Clark, who identified the Five Points of Celebrity, which are the cornerstone of our developing compelling sports entertainers. Our consumer research led us to the framework that said our fans want to get to know you better. We have to create a better connection with those fans. As I've said, and you've read and reported, there are five areas that I call performance. Performance; you must be a top performer. Followed by approachability, appearance, joy and passion, and relevance.

Since many of you have already heard this before, I'm not going to spend a great deal of time discussing this part of the strategic plan, but it is, indeed, one of the most critical areas for our players in order to become more marketable, and I told the players at the Players Summit that each and every one of them embodies those five celebrity points. Each and every one of them will be more marketable and if so, the overall enterprise of the LPGA will be more marketable. And I said not one person in that room could not embody those Five Points of Celebrity.

With respect to our tournament portfolio and operations, for the first time in our history we have devised a tournament portfolio management system where tournament criteria have been established a segmentation of our events has been identified that allows us to assess the health of our current tournament base, evaluate future potential events for strategic fits and determine when an event has run its course and is no longer perhaps appropriate for the LPGA TOUR. This is taking control of our destiny in the tournament arena, an absolute must for our Fans First, in order for us to deliver what we think our brand promises to, which is to deliver on a week-in, week-out basis the very best of women's professional golf.

Consistent with that, we have instituted and will be rolling out in 2003 a requirement where if you are a Top-90 players on the LPGA TOUR, you will be required to play in every official events on our schedule at least once every four years. This program is quite simply our showcasing the very best of women's golf on a week-in and week-out basis, which will ensure every tournament a minimum appearance of once every four years. This is going to help guarantee strong fields week-in, week-out, and work in tandem with our tournament sponsors to create more volume for our sponsors.

On site, we are very excited about a number of initiatives that we will be rolling out with our tournaments, in conjunction with our tournaments and programs, that will be delivering to our tournaments. One of them has been rolled out this week called Cruise the Course. It is being launched here and it is integrated with our teaching club and professional division members who will allow fans a VIP view of watching an LPGA TOUR event with the teaching professionals as guides to that up-close and personal, backstage look at an LPGA tournament. Yesterday, we had 60 fans in the morning go through this program. Yesterday afternoon we had 50, and it's going to be rolled out rest of the tournament week this week.

In Nashville, what we are starting what we call the Nashville Experience. Vince Gill and Amy Grant will be performing a concert on the driving range entitled, "Home on the Range," where there will be a concert open to the public and bringing the fans of Vince Gill and Amy Grant to an LPGA environment which will hopefully establish greater affinity for the LPGA.

Our television partner that week, ESPN is bringing to that facility the ESPN truck which is a self-enclosed, interactive arena with a mock sports center studio that fans can provide their own play-by-play and become Dan Patrick or Kenny May. And also, there will be an ESPN Magazine photo shoot where fans can have themselves put on the cover. It is the first time that ESPN has brought this to a women's sporting event, and on average increases fans by about 4,000 to 5,000 people per event, and we are very much looking forward to that week and that experience with ESPN, and certainly the Vince Gill and Amy Grant Home on the Range concert.

Our new event in Chicago, the Kellogg Keebler Classic is doing a number of things with their access as a leading consumer product, in conjunction with ad agency Leo Burnett, in putting Laura Diaz on boxes of their product in market for ticket promotions. They are mailing out 40,000 tickets to children under the age of 17 in the Chicago area to bring their parents with them. They are incorporating Tony the Tiger and Ernie the Elf (ph) in their marketing campaigns to attract children and families to the event. And it includes -- it includes a number of other fan focus initiatives that are sponsored by two of the fan-friendliest brands in the world.

Our fan and business development initiatives represent our eyes and ears to the fans. One of the things we are going to be focusing on next five years is we are doing consumer research like we have never done before, where we are asking the fans what they want, asking our non-fans why they are not following us, and looking at the perceptions of our fans and non-fans in order to address their concerns and how they can do more with the LPGA, if they are a fan; or how they can become attracted to the LPGA if they are not currently watching us.

The Five Points of Celebrity lose their value in this plan if we don't communicate and build awareness of our sports entertainers amongst our fans. A dedicated marketing and communication initiative will focus on making fans more familiar with our stars of today, as well as tomorrow. And perhaps the most visible and familiar area to you and our fans is our broadcast in digital media area. This is where the vast majority of our fans experience LPGA tournaments week-in and week-out, with the 220 hours of television coverage that we have. Working in tandem with our broadcast partners, we put tremendous focus on making our telecast even more compelling and entertaining with more cameras, more graphics, the use of music, the use of more informed commentators, tune-in promotions, and other elements that will be incorporated in our telecast. In this case, even though I have said in the past that less in more, you will be finding that more is more in the case of digital media.

We are launching a People Magazine celebrity format on our Web site to provide our fans an entertaining way of getting to know our celebrity players first hand. And the global nature of our tour makes it imperative that we increase foreign content on our Web site, to make sure that we are globally fan friendly.

The foregoing is a very small snapshot of the vast amount of effort that you will see unfold over the throughout this year and the coming years on our plan. As I said, we are challenging ourselves to improve the fan experience, and if we do that, we will reach our full potential going forward. It is, as you all know, a very highly-competitive sports entertainment environment, but we are committed to creating not simply satisfied fans, but raving fans to fuel our future growth.

And speaking of growth, what are our expectations? It appears that many of you have periodically established your own report card on what the LPGA is doing in terms of success, and we, too, have redefined how we will assess the overall health of the organization. We learned the purses, tournament sponsors, advertisers and other business indicators are all important to our success, but the ultimate barometer has got to be the fan. So we have established goals for our business to monitor our effectiveness against the fan; and with that, we are establishing a goal of increasing our television viewership by ten percent annually over the next five years and increasing our on-site attendance by 10 percent annually. And we believe by doing these things and achieving these goals and increase our fan base growth, the traditional business indicators of purse growth sponsorship television and advertisers will also increase and will follow.

I am very personally energized by this new strategy because of the positive responses we received across all of our constituency. I have shared it with the players. I'm sharing of much of it with you now. We have chalked to teaching club division members. I had a meeting last week in Tucson with the caddies to make sure they were informed about what the plan was all about. I'll be talking to agents, sponsors in greater detail about this plan, and they have all embraced it given -- the people we have talked to so far have embraced it and given it a very positive nod to the LPGA's future growth.

This is not rocket science, but the key to doing it is actually doing it. We are very encouraged by a number of different reactions from our players in this regard, and if you'll indulge me here for a second, I'll share with you a couple.

Nancy Lopez was quoted as saying she "feels more positive about the organization and its future than she has in many years."

Val Skinner said, "for the 17 years on TOUR, this has been the best thing ever, the Players Summit and the strategic plan."

Crystal Parker has written and said that "I have been a member of this tour for over seven years and I can honestly say that I now have a better understanding about the direction we are headed. Our organization is on the same page, we are a team and I am proud to be a member of the LPGA TOUR."

And from a teaching and club professional division member we got this e-mail -- that "I read document" -- inaudible -- "the time to listen. I ran through it twice, I have a new sense that headquarters and our sectional leaders are asking the tough questions and a workable plan for our organization's future is in place. It really makes me feel about being a member."

These comments are good indications that we are on the right track. I will be reconnecting with you over the next 90 to 180 days and throughout the year to provide periodic updates on the progress of what we are trying to do with this plan. This is quite literally a new LPGA. 52 years is great, but we are going to be more bullish on the next 50 years, and more specifically, the next three to five years. I hope you share our enthusiasm and energy.

I'd like to hope open the floor to questions now to hopefully amplify anything. And no, I will not be going over by hole-by-hole description of my Pro-Am yesterday or be responding to my club selection to yesterday or today.

I think there will be a transcript later. Thank you.

Q. You mentioned that you want to increase the fans, you want more fans. Where are they coming from and what is your competition?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, I think the competition is every entertainment vehicle that competes for the general public's entertainment dollar. We compete with movie theaters. We compete with the PGA TOUR. We compete with Minor League baseball and minor league hockey and every other sport that's out there. We compete with every single entity that competes for the entertainment dollar. I think you have to look at the 26 million golf fans, for example, many of whom are not necessarily fans of the LPGA; that we have to identify those fans, but I think we have to identify those people who are golfers in this country who are not necessarily following the LPGA.

But one of the things we are going to learn in our consumer research is where -- what are the reasons why people are watching us, and what can we do better and what are the reasons why people are not watching us. I think if we identify those, we'll be able to go find those fans that we think will help us grow.

Q. How do you get access to people who are not paying attention to you? How do you find those non-fans and introduce them to what you do?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, I think part of it is, as I said to the players, that they have got -- they are the product. They are the people who the public identify with what the LPGA brand is. In conjunction with emphasizing to the players the Five Points of Celebrity, we want them to embody those things and, if we do embody those things, they will become more marketable themselves as sports entertainers; and once that happens, there will be greater demand for people to want to come watch us and to view us on television.

In conjunction with that embodiment of the Five Points of Celebrity, we also are undertaking an aggressive marketing communications and public relations plan to make the general public more aware of those more marketable athletes.

Q. Women are pretty sensitive, as you probably know, but how did you explain to those sort of more experienced players that they would need to be -- to interact better with the public and that they would need to look better, etc., Etc.? Was that difficult?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I think there was a fair amount of trepidation leading into the plans for the Summit because we were not sure how the reactions were going to be. But I've got to tell you, the reactions of the players from the minute they got into the first session of the Summit until the closing session on Sunday, they were attentive, they were energetic, they were -- they were accepting of what was being told to them, not only by the staff, but also by outside experts that we brought in to convey to them what the issues were. We simply said to them, look, in terms of getting back to the Five Points of Celebrity, if you're a 10 on the performance scale but are lacking in relevance and joy or passion or approachability or appearance, you are going to be less marketable than someone who embodies more of those or all five of those.

I think that resonated with them, not because we said it, because people outside the organization came to them and said this is what the marketplace is expecting from sports entertainers today. Once that happened, you saw a buy-in pretty quickly from the players.

I said this to the media in the days following: I was never more proud of the players for the attention they gave, the time that they gave up and their energy coming out of it, and the positive reaction that we received by the plan. And we are looking forward to having it be implemented not only by them, but through them, as well.

Q. Is this something you might be kind enough to follow on to the European Tour?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I have enough issues to work through on the LPGA TOUR to necessarily worry about the European Tour. Although, many of our players play on the European Tour; and I think if they embody these things, it will only help the European Tour going forward.

Q. You mentioned your plan of yearly increases in TV ratings, as well as attendance. What was your -- can you just give an idea of what your increase was in TV ratings and attendance was from last year from the preceding year?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, with respect to -- we are talking about television viewership rather than ratings because each network has a different universe to -- that ratings are a barometer of. But, for example, last year our broadcast network ratings were relatively flat or slightly up from 2000 to 2001, and our ESPN and ESPN2 events were up 28 percent overall and 42 percent on the weekends.

We have established that -- would we like to grow at that pace every single year? Sure. But I think that 10 percent viewership growth projections are fairly aggressive in an environment where most sports properties and most television properties ratings are going down.

With respect to attendance, that's going to be something -- what we need to do in that area is work on benchmarks, because every event takes attendance in different ways. What we want to be sure -- and I'm not sure we have done on a consistent basis over time and I think we will be doing it rolling out -- is establishing five or six or seven events that you can say, this is the methodology we used to computing attendance; and using that same methodology in future years so you have an apples to apples comparison. In terms of attendance, we reached about 1.5 million in attendance every year in the 36, 37 or 38 events that we have, and I think what the methodology of how we achieve those attendance figures is something that is probably, like any professional golf tournament, somewhat lacking, and we want to make sure we have a little bit more substance behind those methodologies going forward.

Q. (Inaudible.)

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: To answer your question, that is what our attendance has generally been, but until we establish the methodologies, I could probably announce we increased it by 15 percent. But unless we have the methodologies to back that up, which I'm not sure are there yet, that's not going to be a meaningful figure for us.

Q. If somebody finishes Top-90 on the Money List, for the next four years they have got to play every tournament at least once; correct?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: If they remain in the Top-90 for those four years. That's the only way we can really keep track of it, is if you are a Top-90 player for the next four years, you are expected to play every events at least once.

Q. How do you balance that with the fact that they are independent contractors -- or are they independent contractors?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: They are, technically speaking. But they are also members of an organization that I think has to elevate itself in the marketplace and continually try to provide, to our fans -- again, the Fans First goal of delivering our brand promise.

What I said to the players was very simple. Our the product and our customers in this context are the tournaments. If you are not going to go into a tournament at least once every four years, you are ignoring that customer, which is essential for out future growth. We are requiring as a condition of membership for them to make this a requirement, to play once every four years.

Q. What if they miss?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I have four years to determine what the penalty is. (Laughter.)

Q. Would they lose their membership?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: There will be some level of penalty established, and as I said, I have four years to figure what that is.

Q. Will you still be Commissioner by then?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I hope so, sure. I serve at the pleasure of the board, but this is something the board has certainly embraced, and I think the vast majority of players embrace it as well. And again, it's not asking too much of the players to do this once every four years.

Q. 36 ballpark, but you're going to have over the year, how many would you say are weak fields? How many -- yeah.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, it depends on -- certain tournaments view weak fields differently. But I think we are traditionally very strong in providing a representative number of Top-10, Top-20, Top-30 players, and I think -- and I don't have the specific number here, but I think in terms of the top players on our tour, Karrie, Annika and Se Ri, I think one of them played in all but one or two of our events last year in 2001. We can find that number out.

So in terms of that situation, our Top 3 players are playing the vast majority of our events, and there only were two that none of the three play. So you could have a field where you have 7 of the Top-10, but if they don't have a top player, for example, they may view they don't have as good a field.

I think over time, what we are looking at are the events that some players, for whatever reason, not played in three, four, five years and make sure that the fans in those communities can see the great players the LPGA again, to fulfill the brand promise.

Q. Do you have announcements on TBAs on the schedule?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Not at this time, no. I shared with the place, obviously, the TBA in April that's on the schedule will not take place this year. And I shared with the players at the Summit that the TBA that follows in the Solheim Cup will, in all likelihood, not take place this year; and we still have the opportunity to make one announcement on the remaining TBA that is in the first part of October that we hope to have some clarification on in the next few weeks.

Q. Speaking of Florida, do you find it important at all to have a tournament at your headquarters outside of Q-School?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: It is. But I think consistent with the decision we made and overall quality of our schedule, until we can find a sponsor that will be a sustaining sponsor in that community that will provide a long-lasting tournament in that community, and have the ingredients of success with all of the components that are necessary for a successful tournament with the infrastructure that's there, until we have all of those things, I'm not just going to an event into our headquarters just to have an event there. I think long term, it's a goal of ours, but it has to make sense from a quality perspective and for us, quality is going to be looking at what kind of sponsors is there and whether that has long-term chances for success.

Q. I've heard spectators complain about slow play; was that addressed at all at the Summit?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Actually, that was one subject that was brought up briefly in our television discussion in terms of making our telecast more compelling and more entertaining; that slow play is a factor.

I think in terms of how our telecasts are produced, as well as how they are viewed by our fans, and I think we have a very aggressive -- think I one of most aggressive, if not the most aggressive policies in terms of slow play. We come out of the box. We don't do things like fines. We don't do things like warnings. We penalize two strokes for slow play when it's warranted, and I think that's the right way to do it in terms of increasing.

There's also games that players learn how to play, in terms of making sure that when they know they are on the clock, they slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up. They want them to be more mindful of that being an aspect of them being an entertainment product. And you are seeing it in all sports, baseball, in this country, for example, ways in which they can speed up the game, as well, because the games take too long, and slow play does effect the entertainment quality of all of golf.

Q. You talk about television, and you're on the networks a little bit, but you are more likely to be on cable, Oxygen, Golf Channel. Was there talk or room to try to increase your presence on the networks, as opposed to cable, or are you happy with this for the next five years?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I think you've got to look at the overall industry when you answer that question. I think when you see the gravitation of a property like the NBA moving primarily as a broadcast network property moving over to cable, to fund rights fees from two sources, advertisers and subscribers, that, I think is ultimately -- and the proliferation of cable channels anyway, in the further niching of the eyeball, if you will, of the television viewer.

I think cable is going to be where a lot of sports property is going to be migrating to. That is not to say for the major significant events, you don't want to reach the broadest possible audience you can, and for our four major events last year, and again this year we will have all of our four major events, plus the Solheim Cup plus our TOUR Championship on broadcast network TV, and I see that being -- continuing to take place, so the broadest possible audience can see our major championships when they occur.

But I think that you are going to see a greater migration, not only of us, but in all of sports, to cable going forward.

Q. I was curious about your theory of maybe promoting how important it is to promote the star players on TOUR and have them maybe carry a load -- people still talk about Nancy Lopez in her heyday, and the PGA TOUR obviously has Tiger now, so they can sort of piggy-back on him; and even the NBA, they seem to promote their stars. I wonder if you think it's more important to identify star players, to maybe carry the load, or are you more thinking the group as a whole has to do it?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: Well, I think that, again, what we try to do is for a long time, and for many years, our players felt that the golf was enough; that as long as you were able to be great golfers, that that would move the needle in terms of fan interest. Our fans are telling us that that's not the case; that they have to do more than just play great golf. It's No. 1 in the Five Points of Celebrity. In a performance-based sport, you've got to perform to be a successful celebrity athlete. But as I said, if you are a 10 in performance, but yet you don't connect with the fan in terms of relevance or approach you, or feel that they can approach and you don't play the game with passion and you're lacking in other areas, you are not going to be as marketable as other players.

And to the extent that that's the case, we will be focusing on players who do embody more of those Five Points of Celebrity and focus on those things and understand the importance of that in their own individual endorsement arena, as well as the marketability of the overall tour.

So, yes it is going to be something that we are talking to every player about, and I told the players who are 150th on the Money List, that you should want to perform to get into exempt status. The Top 30 players want to it the in the Top-10. The performance has to be there as a focus, but if they don't embody the other five, it's not go to move the needle in terms of our fans.

Q. So when will Jill McGill be appearing in Playboy then?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I don't know the answer to that question. I know that she didn't win the poll, I guess; someone else did.

Q. She was second.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: She was second. That's right.

A cynic might view that as being one of our -- a carryover to my less is more strategy in terms of that -- (Laughter). But it's not.

I think whether you are on the radar screen like the LPGA is on the radar screen, that's a fact of life, to have that kind of attention. It reflected the fact that we have a number of very attractive people playing on the LPGA TOUR. I think it was tastefully done in terms of the poll. I was interested in the results. I think every single member of the overall organization was interested in the results. Not only do we have some of the most attractive athletes in all of sports, we also have some of the most intelligent.

I think that if Jill McGill is approached or is asked to do that, I'm sure she will ask very intelligent questions before she comes to her decision.

Q. So you would not discourage her from doing it if she wanted to do it?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I would encourage her to ask as many intelligent questions as she could and make up her own mind about that, which is her right.

Q. Do you know if the fans expect the same things of men, on the men's tour as they do of the women?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: I don't have as much consumer research on what fans expect of the PGA TOUR as what they expect of our tour.

Q. What are your suspicions?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: All I would say is that I would think Mr. Finchem would have some of the same issues that I'm addressing if Tiger Woods was not on the Tour.

Q. If Grace Park wins this week and -- inaudible -- you're beginning to look good.

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: They would certainly be happy with those two results, I know that. I think that they are two very marketable players on the appearance side of the game, and if they win, they will be -- they will be improving the performance side of their game. But ultimately it has to be all of the Five Points of Celebrity working together, not just appearance and not just performance.

If you perform and have great looks but the fans don't feel that they can approach you, I don't think that will make them as marketable as another athlete.

Q. What about Anna Kournikova, isn't she an exception?

COMMISSIONER VOTAW: She would probably be the only exception I would say. Although she's never won a tennis tournament, she has won matches in tennis tournaments and one would argue that -- is she a tennis player in the classic sense of the word, who happens to be a celebrity; or does she a celebrity, who happens to play some tennis. I think those are questions that I'm not qualified or intelligent enough to answer, but I think it's questions the media has certainly asked.

Thank you very much, folks. I appreciate it.

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