Intense LPGA Ping-Pong tourney shines light on new commissioner’s vision for the tour

The LPGA Tour tested out new online streaming coverage at this week’s LPGA Drive On Championship, a step toward improving fans’ experience watching the best players in the women’s game. As new LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan noted, “we want the world to see our athletes.”

But when asked what this week’s tournament, the fourth edition of the event, was really all about, the LPGA’s new leader had a very different answer.

“Well I think this one is just all about the players,” Samaan said prior to the start of play on Thursday. “We’ve done really unique things.”

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Among those “unique things” was a new player summit focused on their needs, the tour’s values, and helping the players “reach their peak performance.”

“So we really keep calling this ‘For the players, by the players,'” Samaan added. “It’s a little more relaxed environment … and we’re having a lot of fun.”

That’s especially important because in her view “fun leads to great performance,” so ensuring that the star athletes playing on the LPGA are having as much fun as possible is a strategic priority for Samaan in her new role.

A player summit might not sound like “fun” necessarily, but another unique experience Samaan introduced this week certainly did: a player-caddie Ping-Pong tournament.

The inaugural LPGA Drive On Ping-Pong tournament took place Wednesday evening at Crown Colony Golf & Country Club, the host club for this week’s event, and the competition was intense.

You can check out highlights of the Ping-Pong clash that the LPGA shared on Twitter below.

Spoiler alert: American veteran Amy Olson took home the crown. Samaan — a longtime Ping-Pong enthusiast and the person who devised the tournament — also got in on the action, competing alongside the pros.

“Who doesn’t love a good Ping-Pong match?” she said. “When you put these amazing, talented competitive athletes together, there’s some fireworks. There’s a lot of trash talking happening right now.”

Better yet, Saaman should be more than pleased with Olson’s rave review of the event and the week in general, which show her strategy is very much working.

“This week is especially exciting with all the — honestly, there is lot of creative things we’re trying, and I think people are going to get a really different look at us as players,” Olson told LPGA.com. “I think that’s going to help us grow as players and then also the organization.”