The 2010 LPGA Tour schedule is out and it features 23 money events next season.  Word was leaked last night by a slew of players that contacted Steve DiMeglio, Beth Ann Baldry, and/or Ron Sirak with a copy of the schedule.

The 2009 schedule featured 27 events played after 31 were announced to start the year.  A year prior, 34 tournaments were played.  In two years, the LPGA Tour has lost a third of its schedule.

The LPGA Tour's 2010 campaign starts at the same time as last year in mid-February, but begins now in Thailand instead of Hawaii.  After the HSBC Women's Champions events the following week, the tour takes a full month off before coming to the States for the J Golf event played at La Costa.

After one US prep event, the LPGA plays its traditional first major at the Kraft Nabisco Championship.  Following that, April and May are nasty months for the Tour.  There is just one event that starts in April and May, respectively, as opposed to two and three this season.

June and July continue to be solid for the Tour as their majors take place.  In a surprising move, the Wegmans LPGA event in Rochester has now become a major championship.  It is the presenting sponsor of the LPGA Championship.  That's quite an upgrade.

Last season, the LPGA was basically dark in August.  They're still light there in 2010, but they have two events in that month as opposed to one.  The Safeway Classic steps in during what was Solheim Cup week this season.

The fall is kinda murky.  September's tournament load was slashed from four to two, but October improved to three from two.  A couple of big question marks remain for the now-traditional Asian fall swing.  The Grand Air China event that was canceled for this year is sort of back on the schedule, but with TBDs all over it.  The same TBD-ness surrounds the former Hana Bank-KOLON Championship.  It is just mentioned as TBD at the bottom of the schedule with no date, name, sponsor, or purse.

The casualties from the 2009 schedule include: the SBS Open at Turtle Bay, the MasterCard Classic in Mexico, the long-running Phoenix event that J Golf stepped in to salvage last year (now at La Costa), the Michelob Ultra Open, the Sybase Classic, (technically) the Wegmans LPGA, and the Samsung World Championship.  Sybase's disappearance came as quite a surprise to me.

Of the tournaments that were on the 2009 schedule that return in 2010, the Tour only lost $300,000 net in purse money.  Not too shabby.

All told, $35.55 million in purse money was announced.  Three tournaments have TBD for their purses.  At a generous average of $1.7 million for all other events - buoyed heavily by the US Women's Open and Evian Masters - players can look forward to close to $40 million in 2010 prize money.  Compared to the $47.6 million in 2009 prize money, the Tour could be looking anywhere between $7.5 million and $12 million in lost purse money from last year.  That is effectively 20 to 30% decrease depending on how the money falls out in the final schedule.

By and large, I did a really good job of predicting the LPGA Tour's schedule a few weeks ago.  I missed the shocking return of ShopRite, the merger of the Wegmans and LPGA Championship into one tournament, the two Mexico events, and I didn't make mention of the Southern Swing in the fall (though I knew they were coming back).

The number of total tournaments is about on target with what was reported all along, but a little shy of the 25 mentioned to LPGA players in NYC last month and the 27 that Beth Ann Baldry saw in an initial draft.

Also, let me point you to Bill's post that has his observations and insights.