LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan unexpectedly steps down

LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan is stepping down from her position in January, following an up-and-down yr in girls’s professional golf. 

Marcoux Samaan’s surprising departure comes within the wake of the 2024 season, which noticed purses rise to a report stage and Nelly Korda’s ascent to international stardom but additionally moments of angst among the many membership and a logistics debacle on the Solheim Cup in September.

Within the interim, Marcoux Samaan might be changed by Liz Moore, the LPGA’s chief authorized officer. 

“I thank Chairman John Veihmeyer and the remainder of the LPGA Board for trusting me to function the ninth Commissioner of the LPGA,” Marcoux Samaan stated in a press release. “On this position, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside a exceptional neighborhood of athletes, academics, companions, event operators, trade colleagues, media, followers, volunteers, and workers who share a deep dedication to rising the LPGA and utilizing the group’s distinctive platform to empower and advance girls and ladies. 

“I’m happy with the unprecedented development the LPGA has loved since I started my tenure. The technique we have now constructed for development and influence together with the infrastructure we have now added to capitalize on the large alternative forward will serve the LPGA effectively within the coming a long time. With the LPGA positioned for continued development, it’s time for me to have extra time to cheer on our three superb youngsters as they stay their goals whereas I proceed to pursue my ardour for constructing leaders, uniting communities and creating worth by way of sports activities, notably girls’s sports activities.”

Marcoux Samaan took over the put up in Could 2021 after serving because the athletic director at Princeton for almost a decade. In response to a press launch from the LPGA, Marcoux Samaan “prioritized athlete well-being and efficiency by including missed-cut stipends, home journey stipends, entry to psychological well being and bodily efficiency assets, and fully-subsidized healthcare insurance coverage, advantages beforehand unavailable to LPGA athletes.” 

In response to Golfweek, Marcoux Samaan’s contract ran by way of the 2026 season. She is going to step again prematurely of the 2025 season, which has a complete purse dimension of $131 million, a 90 p.c improve from the yr when she took the place. 

Regardless of her successes on the head of the group, Marcoux Samaan’s closing months had been marked by laborious questions that face the ladies’s recreation.

Whereas the recognition of girls’s sports activities at-large grew at a speedy fee in 2024, the LPGA didn’t see marked will increase in tv rankings. As Beth Ann Nichols reported for Golfweek, factions of the LPGA membership have been unsure about Marcoux Samaan’s imaginative and prescient for the tour. Over the last week of the season, CME Group CEO Terry Duffy talked overtly about why his firm sponsors the LPGA, including that the third spherical broadcast protection, which was on tape delay, was “bulls–t,” and that he was difficult Marcoux Samaan to do one thing about it.

There was additionally the Solheim Cup transportation debacle, which noticed 1000’s of spectators ready for hours at a shuttle bus lot for entry to one of many largest golf occasions on the calendar. Marcoux Samaan held an impromptu press convention following the problem, blaming “miscalculations” and inadequate planning on spectator transportation. 

“On the finish of the day, I’m the chief of the group and I’ve to personal it,” she stated. “We now have a event workforce that runs all of this, however I’m sitting up right here in entrance of you because the chief of the LPGA, and I have to personal that.”

Marcoux Samaan will formally step down on Jan. 9, three weeks earlier than the beginning of the 2025 season.