NORTON, Massachusetts – LPGA commissioner Craig Kessler held his first player meeting last week at Gillette Stadium during the FM Championship and Nelly Korda left impressed. When asked how it went, Korda gushed: “Honestly, amazing.”
“Craig, I think, is such an impressive individual,” she continued. “For the first time in a really long time, I felt the meeting was very calm, everyone paid attention. No one was kind of looking off to the sides. … His energy about the tour, his energy about where he envisions the tour going, is really refreshing for the members.”
Korda no longer ranks No. 1 in the world – at least for now – but her buy-in can’t be overhyped. It’s still the honeymoon period for Kessler, whose official starting date was July 15, but constituents from across all corners of the game feel he’s off to a strong start.
During the meeting, a player stood up to ask a question/complain about the tour’s fan-facing app. Kessler’s message was something along the lines of I hear you, but it’s not making the top 15 on the priority list.
That kind of organization and transparency gives players peace of mind, noted Angel Yin.
“Telling us no is better than telling us yes but not doing it,” she said.
Kessler has lots of work to do on LPGA
The 40-year-old Kessler told players that he’s never been part of an organization that has so much to work on. Players laughed, probably because they know it’s true.
The good news is that there’s a lot of upside available for a charismatic, capable leader with a strong business acumen who isn’t afraid to make tough decisions. (Remember when Mike Whan convinced players to compete for free?) There’s a great deal of optimism surrounding the LPGA right now because many believe the tour has found those characteristics in Kessler.
“I think everyone is really hopeful,” said journeywoman Lindy Duncan.
So what exactly is Kessler focused on?
“It may sound corny, and I think I’m hopefully an authentically corny guy,” Kessler told Golfweek onsite at TPC Boston. “Trust is No. 1, 2, 3 and 4. And that takes time. It’s not just with players. It’s with their teams. It’s with our broadcast partners, our commercial partners, the 215 or so employees at the LPGA. I mean, showing the team an enormous amount of love and building a sense of safety and inspiring them so they believe we can actually turn the corner. I’m spending an incredible amount of time on those things.”
Visibility, TV broadcasts near top of Kessler’s list
For many who follow the tour closely, finding ways to improve visibility should be at the top of the list. Kessler says he’s spending “an enormous amount of time” on the subject. A month and a half in, he doesn’t have all the answers yet, but he’s learned from studying other leagues that there’s room for creativity. That’s essential as the LPGA’s domestic TV contract with Golf Channel doesn’t expire until 2030. SBJ reported last month that the tour began working with Sports Media Advisors to help map out its media plans both domestically and internationally.
When asked what he’s found to be the most difficult piece of the TV puzzle, Kessler said quality and predictability.
“I think predictability is an interesting one because golf is notoriously a sport where things move around based on external circumstances,” he said. “So, weather changes, as you saw last week, the LPGA gets the boot in favor of the Tour Championship. I think one of our primary challenges is to create a product that is so compelling so that in the future, when a jump ball has to be called, it’s called in our favor, right? It’s gonna take time to do that.
“And then quality. I’m pretty convinced we can put the right people in a room and quickly figure out what it’s going to take to make our broadcast better tomorrow than it is today, but it’s not free to do that. And so, finding a commercially viable way to elevate the broadcast is something we’re spending a ton of time on.”
Kessler recently held a call with the tour’s sponsors and reiterated his four pillars: building trust, building visibility, building fans and building a stronger financial foundation.
Shawn Quill, National Sports Industry Leader at KPMG, is among those who believe that driving visibility is the most important pillar for the tour right now.
“Star building, brand building for your most significant and popular athletes,” said Quill, “I think that’s what the LPGA needs at this time.”
Of course, having a parade of different winners on tour – 24 so far in 2025 – doesn’t help to build stars.
Then again, Korda won seven times in 2024 and Lydia Ko played her way into the LPGA Hall of Fame and not much changed for the tour.
Kessler thinks of LPGA like a Venn diagram
Kessler said to think about it like a Venn diagram for athletes. In one circle, there’s a group of top performers. The other circle has the tour’s most marketable athletes. It’s the center of that diagram that the tour must lean into.
“Winning alone is not enough,” he said. “Being really interesting alone is not enough. You have to be both good and interesting.
“Then what we have to do as an organization is figure out both on our own and through partners, how do we lean in to make these athletes, not just names, but personalities that people fall in love with? ‘Drive to Survive’ did that for F1. To some extent, ‘Full Swing’ did that on the PGA Tour. What are our versions of those types of things? And we’ll never be able to do it all by ourselves, but thank God, there are third-party content creators out there who have raised their hand and they’ve said, let us help you tell your story.”
The tour declined to share at this point exactly which content creators have raised their hands.
At the 2023 CME Group Tour Championship, then commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan rolled out a plan to help boost the brands of top stars by announcing a new partnership with Naomi Osaka’s production company Hana Kuma. That effort, however, fell by the wayside with no impact.
The LPGA also invested in telling its own story by launching a YouTube series two years ago called ‘Drive On: LPGA All Access.’ The first episode had 110,000 views, but the rest of the series garnered somewhere between 14,000 and 37,000 views on YouTube for each episode.
Player buy-in on time commitments will be crucial
To achieve success in increasing visibility, Kessler will have to convince those in the sweet spot of his Venn diagram to say “yes” more. But he’ll also have to present them with home-run initiatives.
Players have relayed to Kessler that last-minute requests for time outside the ropes don’t work. They need better planning. To that end, he’s hopeful to offer a detailed schedule of what they’ll need from top players over the course of the next season and how it will build their brands.
Kessler’s strategy to get buy-in from players is a simple one: invest time. Whether that’s taking players out for coffee or a beer or talking to their loved ones. Fundamentally, he said, it’s about trust.
In six weeks on the job, he’s been to five events, renting a minivan in Boston for his family of five. Hailed as a relationship guy, Kessler has wasted no time in laying the groundwork.
“I think very related to trust is transparency,” he continued, “and I’m sure you’ve talked to a bunch of players about the player meeting we had the other night. I mean, we didn’t hold anything back. We actually showed the same, or I should say, a subset of the pages we shared with our board of directors this week. We showed the players this is what we talked about, this is where we’re going, and this is how we’re going to get there. And the feedback I’ve gotten from the players is, that’s the level of trust and transparency we’re dying for, keep it up.”
LPGA schedule also a ‘critical’ factor
This is the time of year when the LPGA commissioner typically unveils to players a first look at next year’s schedule. Kessler did that last Tuesday, though it’s certainly still a work in progress.
When asked to give it a grade, Kessler said he’s really proud of the first half of the year because the routing is “really rational.”
“We’re not ping-ponging our players across the country and the world as much as we have in the past,” he said.
The revamped Fortinet Founders Cup, which features a $3 million purse, is certainly a win. Kessler picked up the phone and started a chain reaction that landed the tour back in Northern California at Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club in a short amount of time.
“Craig is such a remarkably positive human,” said Aaron Grant, a friend of Kessler’s and general manager of Sharon Heights.
As a former COO at TopGolf and the PGA of America, Kessler came to the LPGA with a wide web of connections, and importantly, people who offered to help.
There’s a new Asian event listed in the fall swing and three “prospect” tournament placeholders on the calendar, with two in the first half of the year. The first is early February, where the Founders was held in 2025, and the second “West Coast prospect” is early April, where the T-Mobile Match Play event at Shadow Creek was held.
Kessler is optimistic that T-Mobile will remain involved in the tour in ways beyond a title sponsorship. What began as the Bank of Hope LPGA Match Play at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas in 2021 became the T-Mobile Match Play Presented by MGM in 2024.
After two years, the event is no longer on the schedule.
“T-Mobile wants to be a big part of the LPGA,” said Kessler, “and understandably for them to do that, they need to do it in a way that showcases their incredible technology and brand in a wonderful way. And so, while they may take a step back in order to do that, the goal is to take two steps forward, and we’re having very active conversations with T-Mobile about some really big ideas.”
As for the second half of the season, Kessler admits that the routing is “not great.” While the two events in Michigan – the Dow Championship and Meijer LPGA Classic – are now back-to-back, there’s a logjam of summer majors.
The KPMG Women’s PGA at Hazeltine in late June is followed by a week off and then the Amundi Evian Championship. That’s two majors in three weeks. Then, after another week off, the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open will once again precede the AIG Women’s British Open. That’s three majors in six weeks.
“What I’m learning is that the schedule is critical, but not solvable overnight because you’re locked into geographies, multiyear agreements, and you can’t unwind everything at once,” said Kessler. “But know that as we think about ’27, ’28, ’29, we see a path to something that’s even better than where we are for next year.”
Kessler will be pleased to know that this message has resonated at the top.
“It doesn’t just come like this,” explained a patient Korda, snapping her fingers.
Pat Bradley closed meeting with a message
To close out his first player meeting, Kessler invited LPGA and World Golf Hall of Famer Pat Bradley to address the room. The players gave her a standing ovation.
At 74, the six-time major winner and Massachusetts native has more energy and personality than players 50 years her junior.
“In my day, Nancy (Lopez) was the only person who really had an agent,” Bradley told Golfweek while sitting in her new memorabilia room at Mass Golf House. “But the game is such big business that, you know, all these young ladies have agents. They all have help in their daily life. They’re on call 24/7 between their sponsors, their social media, their branding. So it’s a big job. We didn’t have that. I only had me, myself and I.
“But we were very personable, and I think our young ladies need to be more personable when they’re at an event. Lots of times I see them on their phones. I see them with their earbuds. You know, it doesn’t take a lot to be personable and to make eye contact.”
As a youngster on tour, Bradley learned from players like Judy Rankin, Donna Caponi, Sandra Post and Marlene Hagge. The true workday on the LPGA, she said, was the pro-am, and that included lunch.
Bradley looks at the luxury courtesy cars in the parking lot at TPC Boston and thinks about the times they’d call Budget and barter for 10 cars by giving 10 pro-am spots. She’s not resentful about last week’s $4.1 million purse. (Bradley made $5.3 million over the course of her career, which included 31 LPGA titles.) She is genuinely thrilled.
But part of her message to Kessler last week was simple – don’t forget us.
Don’t forget the generations that built up what the 13 late founders started. Bring them in, let them share how the oldest continuing women’s sports organization in the country survived with personality and grit.
Help them to be known by this next generation.
Needless to say, Bradley’s involvement at the player meeting meant a great deal to her.
“It was fabulous,” she said. “Now, I think they’ll recognize me.”
Ultimately, that’s what the LPGA still needs from its stars – to be recognized and remembered.
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