NAPLES, Fla. — LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan was two-sport athlete at Princeton University, playing on both the hockey and soccer teams. As a forward in hockey, her 120 goals ranked second in school history. She returned to the school as its athletic director in 2014 before becoming the big boss at the LPGA just over three years ago.
With almost a half-decade under her belt, she’s hoping that the organization’s recent goals will stave off some direct criticisms of her leadership as the LPGA Tour heads into its 75th year.
“I think,” Marcoux Samaan said Wednesday in her annual state-of-the-Tour address, “it’s a hard job.”
There’s no denying that. She, unlike her counterpart at the PGA Tour, Jay Monahan, does not have to fight the same kind of battles. But to manage the needs of a membership, the responsibility of keeping a 75-year-old women’s sports organization in the forefront of people’s minds and, of course, making sponsors happy, continues to be difficult day-to-day.
In a recent column for Golfweek, longtime women’s golf writer Beth Ann Nichols opined on Marcoux Samaan’s tenure, saying the commissioner “hasn’t won over enough key people in the event business, the player body, the press or inside her own headquarters” and “there’s a profound lack of confidence and inspiration among those in her charge.”
To that, Marcoux Samaan said she points to the LPGA’s go-forward strategy—and some of its big-number increases—as success stories. Under her leadership, its “full media consumption” number, for example, is averaging 10.8 million engagements. That’s up from 4.2 million just two years ago. The staff has grown 35%, too, while a new website launched and a partnership with SeatGeek has driven ticket sales to new levels at key events, she explained.
“I focus every day on trying to support the athletes, to try to grow the Tour, and to try to make this the best place in the world to play and to give additional opportunities to girls and women,” she said. So, I feel like the statistics and the stats really speak for themselves. I think we're experiencing enormous growth. That's really what my job is.
“I'm just dug in on it, and I do the best I can every day.”
Announced Wednesday was the 2025 LPGA Tour schedule, which features 33 official events and a total prize fund of $131 million—the largest in the Tour’s 75-year history and up approximately 90% since 2021. Non-major purses will also be over $83 million for next year, nearly double from 2021, while major-championship purses are up 104% in the same time frame.
This week at the season finale the first-place prize is $4 million, the biggest prize in women’s golf—bigger than three of the four men’s major championships in 2024. CME Group and the LPGA announced a two-year extension in their sponsorship to 2027.
Marcoux Samaan says the work, with respect to purses, is not done yet.
“Should this be more? Should they be making as much as the men? Yes, we want to get to that point when we can,” she stated. “Are we done with that growth? Absolutely not. Are we focused on … continuing to get more fans under our tent and continuing to get more exposure for our players? Definitely. I mean, we're a growth-minded organization. But I don't think anybody could say that the growth hasn't been remarkable over the last three years.”
The schedule is also the key thing for the commissioner. Geographical flow was one of the biggest things to take into consideration, and it’s also the biggest asset for the Tour to sell against in terms of partners, tickets, and more.
“Most leagues, a commissioner wakes up in the morning and someone hands them the schedule and says, ‘This is the product. Now go commercialize it; go make it work,’” Marcoux Samaan said.
For 2025, the LPGA Tour will have two new events—the Black Desert Championship in Utah, which will be the only domestic event on the schedule to provide private charters for LPGA athletes, and the Riviera Maya Open in Cancun—while the Hanwha Lifeplus International Crown will be back on the schedule, taking place in South Korea. Marcoux Samaan said the LPGA will “make some announcements a little bit later” about how it will look. The way the team competition is set up currently, the LPGA Tour is leaving the likes of Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson on the sidelines of one of its biggest owned events.
The commissioner also spoke about exploring some synergies with the Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy-backed TGL, amongst other influencer and brand opportunities.
“The LPGA should be in every conversation about golf,” Marcoux Samaan said.
Sometimes those conversations are tough, and sometimes they turn sour. Such is the role of the leader of a sports organization—especially one that’s coming up on three-quarters of a century old. But the commissioner, said she can only keep trying to, well, score goals.
“We all work hard together. Our team is committed to the mission. I think the results sort of speak for themselves,” she said. “I have to be a results-oriented person, and I think our team—not just me, but again, it's not a me thing. It's our team thing—I think our team has done a really good job.”
Marcoux Samaan, whose contract expires in summer 2026, has about one year left to keep proving exactly that.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Brushing Off Recent Criticism, LPGA Commissioner Points to ‘Enormous’ Growth.
