LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan unexpectedly steps down

LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan is stepping down from her position in January, following an up-and-down yr in ladies’s professional golf. 

Marcoux Samaan’s sudden departure comes within the wake of the 2024 season, which noticed purses rise to a document stage and Nelly Korda’s ascent to world stardom but in addition moments of angst among the many membership and a logistics debacle on the Solheim Cup in September.

Within the interim, Marcoux Samaan will probably be changed by Liz Moore, the LPGA’s chief authorized officer. 

“I thank Chairman John Veihmeyer and the remainder of the LPGA Board for trusting me to function the ninth Commissioner of the LPGA,” Marcoux Samaan stated in a press release. “On this position, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside a outstanding neighborhood of athletes, academics, companions, match operators, business colleagues, media, followers, volunteers, and employees who share a deep dedication to rising the LPGA and utilizing the group’s distinctive platform to empower and advance ladies and women. 

“I’m pleased with the unprecedented progress the LPGA has loved since I started my tenure. The technique we’ve got constructed for progress and impression together with the infrastructure we’ve got added to capitalize on the great alternative forward will serve the LPGA properly within the coming many years. With the LPGA positioned for continued progress, it’s time for me to have extra time to cheer on our three wonderful youngsters as they reside their goals whereas I proceed to pursue my ardour for constructing leaders, uniting communities and creating worth by means of sports activities, notably ladies’s sports activities.”

Marcoux Samaan took over the put up in Might 2021 after serving because the athletic director at Princeton for almost a decade. In keeping with a press launch from the LPGA, Marcoux Samaan “prioritized athlete well-being and efficiency by including missed-cut stipends, home journey stipends, entry to psychological well being and bodily efficiency sources, and fully-subsidized healthcare insurance coverage, advantages beforehand unavailable to LPGA athletes.” 

In keeping with Golfweek, Marcoux Samaan’s contract ran by means of the 2026 season. She’s going to step again upfront of the 2025 season, which has a whole purse dimension of $131 million, a 90 % enhance from the yr when she took the place. 

Regardless of her successes on the head of the group, Marcoux Samaan’s remaining months have been marked by onerous questions that face the ladies’s recreation.

Whereas the recognition of girls’s sports activities at-large grew at a fast price in 2024, the LPGA didn’t see marked will increase in tv rankings. As Beth Ann Nichols reported for Golfweek, factions of the LPGA membership have been unsure about Marcoux Samaan’s imaginative and prescient for the tour. Over the last week of the season, CME Group CEO Terry Duffy talked brazenly about why his firm sponsors the LPGA, including that the third spherical broadcast protection, which was on tape delay, was “bulls–t,” and that he was difficult Marcoux Samaan to do one thing about it.

There was additionally the Solheim Cup transportation debacle, which noticed hundreds of spectators ready for hours at a shuttle bus lot for entry to one of many greatest golf occasions on the calendar. Marcoux Samaan held an impromptu press convention following the problem, blaming “miscalculations” and inadequate planning on spectator transportation. 

“On the finish of the day, I’m the chief of the group and I’ve to personal it,” she stated. “We now have a match group that runs all of this, however I’m sitting up right here in entrance of you because the chief of the LPGA, and I have to personal that.”

Marcoux Samaan will formally step down on Jan. 9, three weeks earlier than the beginning of the 2025 season.