New Name, Same Traditions For Womens Golf's First Major

By City News Service:

The first major women’s golf tournament of the year began Thursday at Mission Hills Country Club with a unique new name and a bigger purse.

Kraft Nabisco’s decision to drop its sponsorship of what was known as the Kraft Nabisco Championship after 33 years prompted fears last year’s tournament would be the last.

“We had heard it was going to be the last year,” Michelle Wie, who first played in the tournament in 2003, when she was 13 years old, finishing in a tie for ninth place, said this week.

“There might be a one-year lull in it. There might be just be a sponsor that might not work so well with our tour.”

The fears that the tournament would end in November when the LPGA and the sports and media business IMG announced Japan’s All Nippon Airways signed a long-term agreement to become the title sponsor.

IMG and the LPGA had entered into a joint venture in July to seek sponsorship for the tournament. IMG began operating the tournament in 2012 and will continue to do so.

The tournament was renamed the ANA Inspiration, stemming from the slogan on the side of its planes “Inspiration of Japan,” according to LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan.

“There is nothing more inspirational that the desert,” Whan said this week. “We started playing with variations of inspiration -- Desert Inspiration, Inspiration of the Desert.

“At the end of the day, I’m a big fan of the shorter the better and so were they.”

Some of the players attending the announcement of the new name in Naples, Florida, were initially unsure if the right name had been chosen, Whan said.

“As we walked out of the press conference, almost every player said we’re on to something in this name,” Whan said. “When you talk about this tournament, you can’t not talk about being inspired.”

The sponsorship agreement includes an increase in the tournament’s purse to $2.5 million from $2 million last year. Additional increases are scheduled over the agreement’s first four years, enabling the purse to reach $3 million.

This year’s winner will receive $375,000. Lexi Thompson received $300,000 for winning last year’s tournament.

Despite the name change, two of the tournament’s traditions will continue.

When the tournament concludes Sunday, the winner will again leap into Poppie’s Pond adjacent to the 18th green, then emerge to be wrapped in an official tournament robe. This year’s robe was redesigned through a partnership with ANA and Japan’s Imabari Towel company.

The winner will receive the Dinah Shore Trophy, named for the late entertainer who co-founded the tournament in 1972 and whose name was part of the tournament’s name through 1999.

The tournament sparked creation of The Dinah Shore Weekend in nearby Palm Springs, now in its 25th year, and billed by organizers as the world’s largest all-girl event and music festival.

Lydia Ko has been installed as the 9-2 favorite by the on-line betting site Bodog. The 17-year-old, who is first on the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, will be attempting to set two records.

If Ko wins, she would be the youngest woman to win a major championship, breaking the record of 18 years, 10 months and 9 days old set by Morgan Pressel in 2007 when she won the Kraft Nabisco Championship.

Ko, who was born in South Korea and lives in New Zealand, has had 28 consecutive sub-par rounds on the LPGA Tour, one behind the record of 29 set by Annika Sorenstam in 2004.

“It’s amazing what Lydia has done,” Wie said. “She’s so impressive with the way she plays and handles herself under pressure.”

To Whan, “the most exciting thing about Lydia Ko is she’s 17 going on 18.”

“I’ve met a lot of 22-year-olds going on 40 because this career grows you up in a hurry,” Whan said. “You’ve got to be more guarded than you thought you had to be. There are a lot of stressors on your time. You can sometimes forget to be 20-something.

“What’s really neat about Lydia is she’s still 17 in a lot of ways. Sometimes in professional sports you can forget to have fun. It’s incredible what she’s doing. It’s even more incredible that she’s doing it and still being young and fun.”

(Image via Shutterstock)