Chasing the Dream on the Futures Tour

Congratulations to Lori Atsedes, winner of the season-opener on the Futures Tour.

I'm a big fan of women's golf in general, and also of the Futures Tour. I sympathize with the women who play the Futures Tour in near anonymity, wracking up huge expenses, playing for paltry paychecks, all to keep chasing the dream of big-time golf.

And many of them reach that dream. In fact, if you look back at the five players per year who graduate from the Futures Tour to the LPGA Tour via the money list (as around 20-30 Nationwide Tour players move up to the PGA Tour based on their money list finish), you can argue that this matriculation is a better indicator of future success than is matriculation from the Nationwide Tour.

For example, here are some of the Futures Tour players who have finished Top 5 on the money list and moved on to the LPGA Tour, since 1999:

• Grace Park
• Lorena Ochoa
• Christina Kim
• Stacy Prammanasudh

Last year's rookie of the year, Seon-Hwa Lee, is another. So are Miriam Nagl, Soo Young Moon, Reilley Rankin, Jimin Kang, Nicole Perrot and Nicole Castrale.

That's a pretty good track record.

And play on the Futures Tour has improved greatly - the average score per round of tournament winners has dropped around two strokes since 1990 - although the Tour still doesn't have the great depth you can find on the Nationwide Tour.

Yet the tour gets almost no attention from most golf fans, and even less from the golf media.

And the women who play it face expenses that surely top $20,000 a year for a full season (I know there are Futures Tour players who read Waggle Room - if I've grossly understated the expenses, please let me know).

But there is comparitively little money at stake on the Futures Tour. The Futures Tour is the second-highest level of women's golf in America, just as the Nationwide Tour is the second-highest level of men's golf.

In 2006, all but a handful of Futures Tour events had total purses of $75,000. On the Nationwide Tour, $75,000 was the average of the first-place winner's check alone.

For winning the Lakeland Duramed Futures Classic on Sunday, Lori Atsedes got a first-place check worth $11,200. Those finishing below a tie for ninth place earned $808 or less.

First-place paychecks on the Tarheel Tour - a fourth-tier men's circuit (first tier, PGA Tour; second tier, Nationwide Tour; third tier, Hooters Tour; fourth tier, various regional tours such as the Tarheel, Gateway and Tight Lies) - were equivalent, and sometimes higher.

There's a reason for the disparity: there's just not as much interest in women's golf from the general golfing public. Women still make up a small minority of golfers and golf fans. The only way to increase the fortunes (literally and figuratively) of Futures Tour golfers and women's mini-tours is to increase the participation of women in the sport, and to draw more fans to women's golf.

In the meantime, the women of today's Futures Tour keep plugging, on a circuit that is still about one thing: chasing the dream.