In the announcement of the 2009 LPGA Tour schedule, we talked about a huge gap of about two months after the Jamie Farr event which featured the US Women's Open, Evian Masters, Women's British Open, and Solheim Cup.  That would create a two month gap for many players that couldn't get into any of those events. 

We speculated here that there may be some Commissioner Bivens would potentially look at changing the Duramed Futures Tour qualifications to allow for the players left out of these events to have someplace to play.

She addressed the issue in her press conference:

Q. Back to the schedule. Beginning with the Women's Open all the way through perhaps the Safeway Classic, there are some events in there, one, two, perhaps even three that a lot of players may not qualify for, which would leave some pretty large gaps within the schedule. Is that something you're working to try to fix in future years and are you only uncomfortable with the fact that some players could go as much as a month without any play?

CAROLYN BIVENS: Sure we're uncomfortable with that. We want to fill the holes. And there's actually a concept that we mentioned briefly last year. It's called the challenger series. It's something that we have in front of companies right now and are talking about a challenger series event.

It is one that would incorporate some of our Futures Tour players, some of our Hall of Famers or veteran players who are no longer playing. Some call them legends. I prefer not to call them seniors. I'm actually older than a number of them. But the veteran players, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 of our current players. And they would be held either in some of those open weeks, or they would be held opposite limited field events.

Remember that master plan that Ron Sirak discussed ealier in the year after the LPGA Championship?  It's happening.

Related: 2009 LPGA Tour Schedule Released