Lexi Thompson’s NBC complaints increase larger LPGA questions

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The Bitter Finish hardly ever seems fairly in golf. However not less than for many, The Bitter Finish seems the identical: A stroll up the 18th fairway on the season-ending event, an opportunity to wave the followers off one final time, a closing putt and a last-ever ovation.

On Sunday on the CME Group Tour Championship, this was the reason for frustration for retiring star Lexi Thompson. In what might very nicely be her closing LPGA occasion — not less than her final as a full-time participant — she wished the prospect to ship her profession off within the conventional manner, to see the 18th gap the best way she had possible spent the higher a part of the final a number of months envisioning. However when she left the course on Saturday night and acquired the next day’s tee occasions, she confronted an odd bit of stories. As a way to match the LPGA’s broadcast window with NBC, the tour determined to cut up the weekend tee containers, sending half of Sunday’s 60 gamers off on the primary tee field, and half off on the tenth.

Provided that Thompson discovered herself within the backside half of Sunday’s subject, the information meant her skilled profession would finish in a harumph. The ninth inexperienced, not the 18th, would welcome her last-ever ovation, and fewer followers could be there to witness all of it.

PRETTY SAD

“Fairly unhappy once you’re at -4 within the season-ending occasion, which might simply be the final CME of your profession and also you gained’t even end on #18 as a result of they determine to double tee on the ultimate day resulting from TV protection window,” Lexi posted in an IG story on Saturday night, voicing her displeasure. “Bummed I gained’t be capable to embrace all of the unbelievable followers on 18 tomorrow as I end. Hopeful some will likely be on the market on #9. However simply know I’m grateful for you all.”

SOP

The put up raised eyebrows nearly instantly within the LPGA world, however not for the explanations one may need thought. For one factor, the LPGA has lengthy maintained the observe of splitting tees on event Saturday and Sundays within the fall — a perform partially pushed by glacial tempo of play, dwindling sunlight hours, and broadcast home windows that the LPGA would do nicely to finish its occasions inside. For one more, Thompson’s end on the ninth inexperienced on the CME Group Tour Championship would occur solely about 30 yards from the 18th inexperienced amphitheater, giving followers ample entry to maneuver from one website to the opposite to ship Thompson off correctly. And for a 3rd factor, Thompson solely completed on the ninth as a result of her 54-hole rating of 4 underneath was greater than 10 pictures off the lead.

In different phrases, Thompson’s complaints may need been substantiated (cut up Sunday tees are nonetheless uncommon on the PGA Tour), and he or she may need been rightfully emotional in regards to the finish of her skilled profession, however her grievance was leaving out quite a lot of related context.

OTHER ANGER

The CME Group Tour Championship’s Saturday broadcast additionally got here underneath hearth final week from inside the LPGA tent, when CME Group CEO Terry Duffy voiced his displeasure with Golf Channel’s determination to broadcast the event’s third spherical on tape delay.

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?” he mentioned in a gathering with reporters earlier than the beginning of the event, including he hoped LPGA commissioner Molly Marcoux Samaan would “make that not be the case.”

Duffy isn’t any stranger to criticizing the LPGA. His firm is likely one of the tour’s greatest benefactors, however that didn’t cease him from calling out a lackluster displaying from LPGA stars eventually 12 months’s CME Group Tour Championship dinner. This 12 months, the subject was TV rights, an space Duffy hoped — as many golf followers do — that frequent sense would ultimately prevail.

“I’d hope that folks would acknowledge that should you’re going to proceed to construct girls’s sports activities, it’s important to give them the identical billing as males,” he mentioned. “Cease — cease — the nonsense of claiming that, nicely, we’ve to point out a males’s event as a result of they’re the boys.”

REWIND

A fast refresher: Networks and golf excursions set broadcast schedules, or home windows, collectively. It advantages all events when essentially the most dramatic moments at tournaments are televised, so networks will typically work to ensure occasions are accomplished inside the broadcast window.

Sunday on the CME Group Tour Championship had added broadcast significance to each events. NBC was airing the motion, a nationwide community with viewership typically 10x that of the Golf Channel, and the LPGA had an out-time within the early night, with an all-important Sunday Night time Soccer broadcast set to start because the NFL’s 4 p.m. video games concluded.

These items collectively contributed to NBC setting a 4 p.m. finish time to the CME Tour Championship telecast, which contributed to the LPGA’s determination to separate the Saturday and Sunday tee containers, which contributed to Thompson’s frustration.

WHY

The larger query going through the LPGA/NBC debate, although, is why? Tempo of play and TV publicity have ballooned into rising points on the LPGA, and Thompson’s frustration underlined the methods the 2 issues typically dovetail.

On one hand, the tee time determination confirmed the LPGA working in favor of TV publicity, working to make sure a compelling broadcast stuffed the airwaves throughout one of many uncommon moments of nationwide publicity. On the opposite, although, it confirmed the extent tempo of play points have an effect on the week-to-week product of the LPGA, on this occasion casting doubt that 20 threesomes {of professional} golfers might full their rounds between dawn and 4 p.m.

DOES IT *REALLY* MATTER

In most situations, no: The LPGA gained’t run into many points working in the perfect pursuits of TV companions. However on the similar time, failure to handle the underlying points going through the tour’s telecasts nearly definitely undermines the LPGA product. Simply final week, Charley Hull outlined her “ruthless” slow-play answer to cheers from some inside the girls’s sport — “For those who get three dangerous timings, it’s a tee shot penalty. When you have three [penalties], you lose your Tour card.”

Is such a dramatic step essential to rectify the issue of six-hour rounds on the LPGA? Maybe not. However working from the present place to appease the enjoying class has saved purses rising at the price of discontent amongst almost everyone else. A rising girls’s sport appears to be the aim of broadcasters, sponsors and gamers alike, however too typically these events have failed to fulfill even a few of the decrease thresholds for enhancing leisure worth and viewer curiosity.

It appears it’s previous time for someone to stipulate an answer.

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