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The LPGA Tour noticed a shakeup in management this week when Mollie Marcoux Samaan introduced she can be stepping down as commissioner subsequent month, and Liz Moore can be taking on within the interim.
Marcoux Samaan has served because the tour commissioner since May 2021 and launched file prize cash to the group, however confronted criticism for the tour not seeing a rise in reputation throughout an increase in ladies’s sports activities. Moore has been the chief authorized and know-how officer.
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The LPGA Tour practically had a serious controversy on its palms when it got here to trans inclusion in ladies’s sports activities. Hailey Davidson, a transgender ladies’s golfer, participated in Q School in hopes of buying an LPGA Tour card. Davidson had been faraway from the NXXT Tour as a result of its coverage to ban transgender athletes from competing towards the gender they establish as.
Two skilled ladies’s golfers and one retired professional hoped the LPGA Tour would take initiative and enact a coverage to forestall transgender athletes from competing towards organic females on the tour.
“My hope is the following LPGA commissioner has the braveness and boldness to do what’s greatest for not solely its present members however the way forward for ladies’s golf by emphasizing equity by protecting ladies’s golf feminine!” professional golfer Lauren Miller, who can be an envoy for the Independent Women’s Forum, mentioned Wednesday in a information launch.
Pro golfer Hannah Arnold hoped that the group would get management that’s targeted on the participant.
GOLFER WHO COMPETED AGAINST TRANS HAILEY DAVIDSON ‘PRAYING’ FOR LPGA GENDER RULE CHANGES
Transgender golfer Hailey Davidson takes care of a shot at pre-qualifying stage of the LPGA Q-Series. (Riley Gaines/X)
“We want management who emphasizes participant first and tour second,” Arnold, who can be an IWF ambassador, mentioned in a information launch. “Naturally it’s the women skilled golf tour for a motive. It’s our duty to carry management accountable to the gamers. I’m hoping the tour leads with a participant first mentality going ahead.”
Amy Olson, an IWF ambassador who lately retired from the LPGA, applauded Marcoux Samaan for rising pay on the tour, however the subsequent chief wanted to ensure what the “L” in LPGA stood for.
“Mollie has been a fierce advocate for rising pay for LPGA gamers. One of probably the most essential points the following chief might want to present readability on is what the L’ in LPGA means,” Olson added.
Each of the golfers have been amongst those that signed a letter to the LPGA Tour demanding the group acknowledge the male benefit in relation to golf between the 2 genders.
The letter additionally requested that the LPGA Tour “set up and implement the suitable of feminine skilled golfers to take part in ladies’s golf primarily based on sex-eligibility should be restricted to members of the feminine intercourse.”
The LPGA Tour has a gender coverage. It permits transgender golfers to take part so long as sex-reassignment surgical procedure is finished after puberty and hormone remedy necessities have been met.
LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan speaks to the gallery after the ultimate spherical of the LPGA Ford Championship golf match on Sunday, March 31, 2024 in Gilbert, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
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Golfweek reported it obtained a memo from Marcoux Samaan in August, which mentioned the LPGA Tour and Epson Tour will conclude a assessment of its gender coverage by the top of the yr, when adjustments, if any, can be applied earlier than the beginning of subsequent season.
Fox News’ Scott Thompson contributed to this report.
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