LPGA To Test Freemium Model...On Themselves!

Beth Ann Baldry reveals that when the LPGA Tour announces its 2011 schedule Jan. 6, there will be a Phoenix event March 18-20 featuring no purse but all of the other stuff that goes with playing in an event.

The inaugural Founders Cup, designed in the spirit of pioneering LPGA founders, will be a charity-driven event in which players receive financial help for travel expenses, but don’t take home a paycheck. Sources say the three-day tournament will be in Phoenix at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge on March 18-20, kicking off the tour’s domestic schedule. The move fills a key market for the LPGA, which attracted record crowds at nearby Superstition Mountain when Safeway was sponsor of the former event.

Players still would receive official “money” and points toward rankings, the Hall of Fame and season-ending awards. They’d just give whatever money they earned back to charity.

This is either a sign of embarrassing desperation or an embarrassing embrace of "charity" as the driving force behind professional golf tournaments. Please! Pay to play, anything else is a publicity stunt or a strange compromise to a corporate sponsor that sets a potentially dreadful precedent.