Would IMG or Octagon Be Able to Help the LPGA Tour?

I had a fleeting thought the other nice when thinking about the developing story around the tenuous grasp that LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens has on her post.  I wondered if one of the two companies that own, operate, or manage the most LPGA Tour events - IMG or Octagon - would be willing to step in and run the LPGA Tour.

The Examiner and Golf Observer's Dave Seanor explored the subject in his outlook on the future of an LPGA Tour without Carolyn Bivens.  He rightly notes that a Bivens-less LPGA Tour still does not get the Tour out of the woods. Someone will have to represent the Tour in all of the difficult negotiations that still face the Tour.  Negotiations are not going well with Wegmans, the Farr event, or InBev about their future events.

The problem is that an interim commissioner will be seen as a lame duck with little authority and exactly zero bargaining power - even less than the perceived power that Bivens wields in her wounded position now.  A new commissioner would have to be identified and hired within 30 days by the LPGA Tour Board of Directors.  Bivens' hire took much longer than that after the departure of prior commissioner Ty Votaw.

In that case, perhaps IMG and/or Octagon could best help the LPGA Tour through this difficult period.  After all, both have an incredibly vested interest in the success of the Tour.

IMG alone operates, manages, or owns eight tournaments on the LPGA Tour schedule.  They represent more than 15 of the Tour's players, including many stars.  Certainly, any effort by then to run the LPGA Tour may well blur the lines of conflict of interest, but as Dave Seanor notes, that issue should not even matter to the Tour at this junction.

I am not ready yet to suggest, as Dave does, that the PGA Tour may well be a suitor to buy up the Tour.  Still, that cannot be considered out of the realm of possibility.

The take away from this should be that the players are right that Commissioner Bivens cannot use the poor economy as a crutch for dropping seven events in two plus seasons.  But, it is also true that a Bivens ouster would do nothing specifically to solve the LPGA's woes.  The Tour will need a bench player - and fast - to right the ship.