NAPLES, Fla. – The 2025 season was historic for the LPGA. But that history has also brought with it a question that must be answered as new commissioner Craig Kessler looks to take the tour to new heights.
This season, the LPGA has increased its depth and parity. Entering the CME Group Tour Championship this week, there were 29 unique winners. Until world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul made an unlikely comeback at the Buick LPGA Shanghai on Sunday last month, there had been zero repeat winners this season. A year after Nelly Korda won seven times, including five in a row, the LPGA experienced the opposite. There were 11 first winners. Star amateur Lottie Woad turned professional and immediately won the Women’s Scottish Open. Rookie of the Year winner Miyu Yamashita won the AIG Women’s Open and then joined Thitikul as the only other repeat winner as she captured the Maybank Championship.
Korda, who has yet to win in 2025, will be the first to note that the talent on the LPGA is getting better and better every year. That’s a good thing, especially in the long run. Armed with a transformative new TV deal, Kessler and the LPGA have a vision to attract more attention and reach a broader audience. But can the LPGA do that with depth and equality, or does the tour need one or two stars to dominate and transcend in the larger sports conversation, and take the tour with them?
With the LPGA season coming to a close this week in Naples, the answer is murky at best.
“As a tour and even from a fan perspective, it’s great to have someone like Nelly who was so dominant last year,” said Hall of Famer Lydia Ko. “Definitely a lot of attention, especially with her – in the case of Nelly, because she is an American player. That attracts a lot of different attention. Even if you don’t play golf, you know who Tiger Woods is. Having such a figure is, yes, very important, but at the same time it’s just a level of play between the No. 1-ranked player in the CME rankings up to 100, I think the talent is not that much different.
“I think having better talent and more talent in the rankings like Tour is just as important as having one superstar.”
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The question becomes even trickier when you consider the LPGA’s global reach. The Tour’s Asian swings show how popular it is worldwide. But with most tournaments played in America and much of the television revenue coming from the United States, it may take superstars to take the LPGA to the next level in America, while depth and equality drive it around the world.
“I think the Tour is the strongest it’s ever been,” said three-time major champion Minjee Lee. “I think because we play mainly in America on our Tour, we feel like if we have a star or two on the LPGA, maybe it can help us in some way.”
“We’re marketing ourselves as a very global tour, and I think that’s what we see and that’s what we see, especially because we [11] This year it’s the first winners, last year and the year before,” Ko said. “It’s a double-edged sword in the sense that you want the depth and the talent because you just want to see the whole game grow, but at the same time, if I were to market someone, it’s much easier to market one person than 30 people.”
Lexi Thompson, who has been one of the big faces of the Tour for more than a decade, doesn’t think the LPGA’s growth strategy should depend on one or two players hoisting the majority of the trophies. There is strength in numbers.
“It’s a worldwide tour,” Thompson told GOLF. “These ladies come from all over the world. It’s not a matter of winning multiple times. That’s great and all, but I think people like to see different winners and different personalities, you know, different ways that you move around the golf course.”
Kessler knows that one of his biggest goals is creating and marketing stars. The talent on the LPGA is undeniable, but stars don’t just exist inside the ropes. It will take the support of a tour to raise their profile and make them bigger than golf. High quality play is important, but so is the ability and willingness to go above and beyond the course. If you want to get eyeballs you wouldn’t normally get, you have to go where they are. You can’t just expect them to come to you.
“There are no silver bullets to creating stars, and this is what an ecosystem is needed for,” Kessler said. “Yesterday we had our partner meeting and at the end they kindly asked: what can we do to help? We said two things: raise your hand if you have any ideas or a megaphone to share; and second, meet those who can also help.
“There are so many examples we can point to, whether it’s what Nelly did by going to the Met Gala or with Sports Illustrated or Charley [Hull] going to a state banquet in Britain or some of the recent things she has done on social media. I could take you through a variety of players and things they did to emerge in the culture, and not just on the ropes. Those things make the difference.”
For Kessler and the LPGA, their job is to find players who have the ability to reach a larger audience – those not typically tuned into golf – and who want to be the face of the LPGA. It would be great if those players were also consistently at the top of the rankings, but that is non-negotiable. Kessler has already scored a few big wins for the LPGA in his short time at the helm, and he’s willing to try different things to get to the end goal, with star building being one of his top priorities.
“You have the best players, you have the most marketable players, and you have the ones who are actually willing to lean in and do the work,” Kessler said of building stars. “It’s the handful of players at the center of that Venn diagram that we’re going to invest our resources in to create global superstars and create that player and fan connection.”
Hull, who specifically mentioned Kessler as a top player willing to do things off the golf course, is prepared to become one of the faces of the LPGA.
“I’m just being myself,” Hull told GOLF. “I think it’s great that they invited me [to the UK state dinner]. I had a pretty good year, and it was fun. I think it’s a good thing for women’s golf that people are recognizing it, and yeah, I’m just being me.”
Hull won the Kroger Queen City Championship this season and fell just short at the AIG Women’s Open on Sunday. She is one of, if not the star of, the LPGA, and she sees the explosion of talent in women’s golf as the foundation of what the LPGA is building.
“It used to be like the top 10 players could win, and now it’s like the top 30, 40 players all have a chance to win because the standard has gone up and we have so much more depth and that’s what we want,” Hull said.
The LPGA would likely benefit from one or two dominant players breaking through to a larger audience. It certainly wouldn’t hurt. But what everyone from Kessler to Hull, Korda and Ko want is not to put everything on the shoulders of one player.
“Just the way our Tour is now, I think there are so many stories that can be told that we don’t necessarily have to just rely on one person,” Ko said.
“So our job is to find the right holistic, balanced set of stories to tell that gets our fans excited week after week,” Kessler said in laying out his strategy. “If we rely on one person, whether it’s a star or a celebrity, to carry the weight of the Tour on their back, I think we’ve missed the boat.
“There is so much magic happening on the LPGA and we need to bring it all to life.”
As they do, the answer will become clear.
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