If you're a frequenter to this blog or my work, you know that I'm a big critic of LPGA Tour Commish Carolyn Bivens.  You would also know that I mostly rail on Bivens for her ironic style of communicating at a personal level and as the voice of the LPGA Tour.  Considering her marketing and branding expertise before taking this position, it is difficult to understand how the Tour can appear to look bad in that department.

Still, have you ever had one of those moments when you say to yourself, "I can't believe that I'm about to do this, but...?"

Well, I'm having one of those now.

Nancy Berkley penned a piece for Cybergolf on the LPGA Tour's reorganization.  Nancy is a women's golf expert and has written publications for the National Golf Foundation, Golf for Women, and is a part of the women's golf industry.

Berkley tries to be hard hitting, but she misses some critical points.

First, an easy one:

Read the official LPGA press release for yourself on Cybergolf. At this time, the official release is still not on the LPGA.com website, offering yet another insight into the public relations skills of the LPGA.

Actually, it was featured on LPGA.com's front page.  We posted a link to it here when we covered the topic last week.  The LPGA does plenty of things that make you scratch your head, but this is not one of them.

The critique of the reorganization that Nancy levies seems to come from her perspective of someone interested in benefiting from a growing women's game.  She is not certain if Commissioner Bivens' moves are geared toward the players on Tour or female golfers around the world.

Nancy seems concerned that Bivens isn't focusing enough on female golfers at large.  The problem with this is that it's not her job.  As I have said on multiple occasions, the job of a Tour commissioner is to represent the best interests of the Tour and its employees - players and staff.  That's it.  You can argue about how well Bivens has done on that goal, but that's her goal and nothing else.

Berkley's angle appears to be growing the game of golf for women.  The responsibility for that - in a corporate sense - falls on the golf business world.  If there are more golfers, then the golf industry benefits.  It is a simple equation, really. 

Bivens and her counterpart Tim Finchem may certainly stand to benefit from a growth in the total number of golfers.  Tim Finchem has participated actively in trying to grow the game and placed former LPGA Tour Commissioner Ty Votaw into the Olympic golf fray as a sign of that.  Still, it is not their mission to grow golf.  It is their mission to grow their Tours.

The reality is that inorganic efforts to growth golf are done for selfish reasons.  The reason is to gain influence and make money.  Still, Berkley takes her criticism too far in saying that the USGA and PGA of America would be perfectly happy with the current number of golfers in the game if it could maintain its current operations. 

The people that work at the USGA and PGA of America have a tremendous passion for the game, but there is an element of self-preservation in their efforts to grow the game.  It is undeniable.  But most people that work at these organizations do so because they love golf and want to share it with the world.  That does not strike me as having an ulterior motive.

Nancy then turns around and says that the PGA of America's "Play Golf America" initiative was an exception to her critique.  Connecting the dots here shows some real incompatibility with that line of thinking.  If there are more beginner golfers, then there are likely more golfers taking lessons.  In the world of cynicism, that would be taken as an ulterior motives to get some additional work for the 26,000 PGA teaching pros.

Look, growing the game of golf has to be done at the grassroots level.  It has almost always been that way.  With the exception of the temporary growth in the game thanks to Tiger Woods, the number of golfers only grows when the people that share this game with others make it fun, accessible, and affordable.

That means that golfers have to recruit others to learn to play.  Courses have to be available to be played in less than five hours.  The manufacturers and courses also have to not be charging so much money to play the game that it becomes too much of a barrier to entry. 

The professional tours have demonstrated no clear impact on the number of golfers in this country.  None.  If they did, it would be fair to levy a criticism that implicates their lack of effort to grow the number of golfers.  In the specific case of the LPGA Tour and Carolyn Bivens, though, the critique is simply unfounded and inaccurate.