When second-year L.P.G.A. participant Allisen Corpuz tapped in her ultimate putt on the 18th gap at Pebble Seashore Golf Hyperlinks this month, she received the USA Girls’s Open with a memorable ultimate spherical, overtaking the chief and holding off a surging challenger in Charley Hull.
Corpuz additionally cashed a $2 million first-place test, which was greater than double what Annika Sorenstam received for all three of her U.S. Girls’s Open victories mixed.
Regardless of shedding ProMedica, the well being care firm, as presenting sponsor for the Open, the USA Golf Affiliation elevated the full prize purse by $1 million to $11 million this 12 months.
It’s a part of a broader transfer in girls’s skilled golf to extend sponsorship for tournaments in addition to for particular person golfers. Over the previous few years, purses have risen at tournaments, new sponsors have sought out golfers and even gamers who are usually not on the high of their careers have reaped the advantages.
“Elevating purses continues to raise everybody,” stated Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the L.P.G.A. commissioner.
On the tour stage, the L.P.G.A. has been rising prize cash for gamers up and down the tour rating. This 12 months, the full purse for 36 official occasions is greater than $100 million. Ten years in the past, that quantity was $49 million, however even in 2021 it was round $70 million.
Final 12 months, 27 L.P.G.A. gamers earned $1 million in prize cash (up from 15 the 12 months earlier than). That quantity nonetheless pales compared with the boys’s PGA Tour, the place, final 12 months, 126 gamers earned greater than $1 million. (Solely 125 gamers have totally exempt standing on the PGA Tour, that means even gamers who couldn’t play each occasion or who certified for all the majors earned greater than the highest L.P.G.A. gamers.)
But Samaan and different leaders are additionally targeted on the person gamers. The L.P.G.A. stated that from 2021 to 2022, the No. 1 participant on the earth earned 22 % extra, however the fiftieth ranked participant noticed her earnings rise 44 %. The a hundredth ranked participant acquired a 30 % elevate, to $167,000 from $128,000.
Whereas the highest gamers in any sport will all the time be compensated nicely, golf is exclusive in that lots of the gamers in every event get lower and typically don’t receives a commission something for the week.
“We’re additionally seeking to our companions and never simply the right way to develop the purses, but additionally for assistance on the expense facet,” Samaan stated. “A number of the challenges our gamers face is half of them don’t get to play on the weekend every week. Some sponsors embrace miss lower funds. Some supply stipends or journey bonus to cowl primary bills.” However not all of them.
One other issue driving elevated curiosity — and cash — in girls’s golf is the need amongst firms to sponsor each women and men. Whereas a journeyman participant on the PGA Tour has hardly ever needed for a sponsor, girls, even these just under the highest ranks, have usually struggled.
Many firms, as a part of broader efforts at range, fairness and inclusion, wish to add feminine gamers. Early to this was KPMG, which broke floor — and set a brand new normal — by persevering with to pay Stacy Lewis beneath her sponsorship contract when she had her daughter in 2018.
Beforehand, golfers needed to play a sure variety of occasions with the intention to obtain all of their sponsorship {dollars}. As an alternative, KPMG opted to do what it might have performed for an worker who went on household depart. Many different sponsors have adopted go well with.
Aon, the danger administration consulting agency, now provides the identical prize cash to women and men for its yearlong Aon Danger Reward Problem, which assesses a participant’s total rating on a difficult gap at every week’s event.
Lizette Salas, ranked eightieth on the earth and in her twelfth 12 months as an expert, is sponsored by Aon. She stated the conversations she’s had with sponsors had been radically completely different in the present day from when she started.
“To start with the conversations had been brief,” she stated. “I used to be just about pitching myself, versus an agent or supervisor doing it. Now because the investments develop into larger, the dialog between participant and sponsor has modified. It’s created a extra private relationship between the executives and the participant. I’m a giant individual in range and inclusion. Numerous the businesses I’m sponsored by have taken that massive step of their firms, too. It’s refreshing.”
Smaller firms have additionally gotten in on supporting L.P.G.A. gamers. Cozen O’Connor, a legislation agency primarily based in Philadelphia, has sponsored gamers on the PGA Tour for a number of years. This 12 months, it added Ally Ewing, who was the L.P.G.A. Rookie of the Yr in 2016, completed eleventh at this 12 months’s U.S. Girls’s Open and is ranked thirty sixth on the earth.
“Once we determined sponsoring gamers was a part of our branding technique, we needed to verify it was inclusive, stated Michael Heller, government chairman and chief government of Cozen O’Connor. “We needed it to characterize our agency and our shoppers. It was essential so as to add a feminine participant.”
The agency chosen Ewing due to her story: battling by way of Kind 1 diabetes, and succeeding at each stage of the sport.
Legislation companies, like insurance coverage and financial-service firms, are pure suits for the L.P.G.A., given the historical past in these industries of utilizing golf for leisure and advertising.
Hull, the British golfer who made a cost on the U.S. Girls’s Open, has a big social media presence that has allowed her to domesticate assist from a wide range of sponsors, together with conventional golf manufacturers like TaylorMade, the monetary adviser Hachiko Monetary and a wellness complement.
“My early sponsors had been manufacturers that had been already in golf and who had been seeking to activate their partnerships, like Ricoh across the Girls’s British Open, or Omega across the Olympics,” Hull stated. “Now I really feel my sponsors are extra private to me, equivalent to Drink Mojo which is a complement I exploit, or Hachiko, who’re serving to to coach me on funding.”
Hull stated her sponsors have modified as she’s grown as a participant, and she or he’s superb with that.
“As I’ve grown up and matured, so have my sponsors, and that’s not all the time simply on my behalf,” she stated. “A sponsor is perhaps on the lookout for a selected sort of individual to suit their ambassador function, in order I become old I would develop out of the kind of individual they’re on the lookout for.”
The highest gamers — who’ve the power to transcend the game — have probably the most energy in negotiating offers with their sponsors. Jessica Korda, who was ranked 14th on the earth final 12 months earlier than a again harm, signed a cope with FootJoy to put on its attire from head to toe. She was the first feminine participant to signal such a cope with FootJoy.
She notably appreciates the sponsors who had been together with her when she began.
“My rookie 12 months [2011], I performed in 14 or 15 occasions,” Korda stated, and she or he made about $50,000. “So having a sponsor actually, actually helped to cowl my price. We don’t have well being care. We’ve to pay quite a bit out of pocket. Bills are fairly excessive.”
Korda, who has made $7.6 million on the golf course, stated that she’s looking forward to gamers popping out of school now, in a special sponsorship setting.
“It permits them to play with a bit much less stress and never go paycheck to paycheck. Having that consolation was enormous for me again then. Now it’s aligning with manufacturers I actually take pleasure in.”