As announced this afternoon by the LPGA Tour, Retired Rear Admiral Marsha Evans has been named the acting LPGA Tour Commissioner.  She will hold the post until a suitable replacement has been found which, according to LPGA Board of Directors member Dawn Hudson, could be in as little as two months.  In the presser to announce the move, Evans made it clear that this would be a temporary post and should would not seek to become the permanent Commissioner.

So, that likely leaves Admiral Evans to navigate the LPGA Tour through the remainder of the 2009 season - though a replacement may well be identified by the end of the Solheim Cup in late August.

While her stint may be short-lived, here's a quick look at your new interim Commissioner. 

She was the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and the first woman to command a U.S. naval station (Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay Area).  She held the top positions at the Navy Recruiting Command, where she managed 6,000 employees in1,200 locations and recruited more than 70,000 officers and sailors annually, and then at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  Evans retired from the military in 1998.

Evans then moved to serve as the head of the Girl Scouts of America for a four year tenure.  Her tenure was lauded for Girl Scouts' increase in membership and programs designed to reach out to girls from minority backgrounds or difficult circumstances - such as girls with mothers who are incarcerated.

For those of you concerned with Marsha Evans' financial position, never you worry.  Here's Forbes.com's breakdown of her pay last year from serving on various corporate boards.

Then, Evans moved to serve as the 13th head of the American Red Cross.  While the LPGA Tour's bio of her is quite flattering, Evans resigned on the eve before a 2005 Congressional hearing looking into the Red Cross' response to Hurricane Katrina.  The NY Times reported that the reason behind the resignation was poor relations with the Red Cross board, which has ousted several Red Cross presidents in the last decade - including former North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole.

Currently, she’s director of the Office Depot, U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, Weight Watchers International, the North Highland Company and Huntsman Corporation.  She was a director at  AutoZone and May Department Stores (former owners of Hecht's).  She is also a director of the Estate of Lehman Brothers Holdings.  Her leadership on the organization's Finance & Risk Committee was called into question by corporate governance gurus in the wake of Lehman's failure.

A quote from Evans in a 2005 Washington Flyer piece about her work with the American Red Cross may well sum up her approach to a brief job - and her perspective on the next LPGA Tour Commissioner.

"The challenge was to take an organization that was set in its ways and rev it up to make it more exciting and engaging."

Having been elected from the LPGA Tour's Advisory Board to its Board of Directors this year, perhaps that point of view helped get her into this position.