Golf Question of the Week: What’s the Future of American Stardom on the LPGA Tour?

So LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens is “not concerned about Americans getting squeezed out.” This was in response to questions she fielded at last week’s HSBC Women’s Championship in Singapore, amid growing concern that her U.S.-based tour has been “invaded” by Asian players.

My initial thought? Well, shouldn’t she be concerned? Not necessarily by the Asian factor, but by the fact that the global emergence of top-flight women players has made it that much more difficult for the best American golfers to ascend to the top?

As a golf fan but more of a casual sports fan, I tend to shamelessly wrap myself in the flag when it comes to following non-team sports like golf, tennis and boxing. Not that I completely blow them off when an American athlete isn’t competing at or near the top in each sport, but let’s just say my viewing interest is far greater when there is.

If you use this measure, the PGA Tour has never really encountered this problem. Tennis? Nothing against Justine Henin (Belgium) or Roger Federer (from Switzerland, who may very well turn out to be the game’s best ever when all’s said and done), but they just don’t get me excited about Wimbledon or the U.S. Open the same way that Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Chris Evert and Billie Jean King did back in the day, or Andy Roddick and the Williams sisters occasionally do today.

Boxing’s broad appeal has always hinged on its heavyweight champion, and it enjoyed a century-long run of popular (and American) stars in that division that peaked in recent years with the Ali/Holmes/Tyson/Holyfield succession. Can anyone tell me who the heavyweight champ is today? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? … (If you’re just dying to know, Wikipedia tells us there are actually three right now – Russia’s Oleg Maskaev in the WBC, Uzbekistan’s Ruslan Chagaev in the WBA, and Ukraine’s Wladimir Kitschko in the IBF & WBO).

Back to the LPGA. Right now, seven of the top 10 players in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings hail from other countries – led by Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa, and followed by a Swede (Annika Sorenstam), Aussie (Karrie Webb) and Norwegian (Suzann Pettersen) before you get to the highest-ranked American player (Paula Creamer). And as great as the likes of Sorenstam and Ochoa have been for the game in recent years, you have to go back a decade and a half to find the last American player to earn LPGA Player of the Year honors (Beth Daniel, 1994).

From a jingoistic point of view, does all this paint a bleak picture for the future of the LPGA? I don’t think so. First of all, Bivens is doing the right thing by continuing to cultivate Asia’s rabid interest in the women’s game – and boosting the Tour’s bottom line by improving their prospects of picking up more rights-fee television deals.

And though Ochoa remains the unquestioned player to beat right now, the LPGA Tour boasts four telegenic young stars from the United States who finished 2007 in the top 13 on the money list – all under the age of 25 (Creamer, 21; Morgan Pressel, 19; Natalie Gulbis, 24; and Brittany Lincicome, 22). They’ve helped increase network viewership by 14 percent and cable audiences by 47 percent since 2005. Should at least one of these players emerge as a consistent challenger to Ochoa’s throne, those numbers could skyrocket. So, too, could corporate sponsorship and television rights fees.

It just might take a little time to develop.