Seoul searching good for Kapalua
By Ferd Lewis
In January, when the LPGA chose the J Golf channel as the home for its television rights in South Korea, the ex-partner, Seoul Broadcasting System, fumed.
"They have moved Tiffany's from 57th Street in Manhattan (New York) to Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn," SBS President Sang Y. Chun pointedly and colorfully told GolfDigest about the end of what had been a 15-year partnership in the kind of acrimony rarely seen publicly for such deals.
Turns out SBS got the last laugh and Hawai'i, emerging the better for it, got plenty to smile about, too.
SBS took the $4 million or so it saved on the LPGA slight and threw a few million more won (the unit of Korean currency) on the table for good measure to land the host rights for a decade and keep what had formerly been the PGA Tour's Mercedes-Benz Championship at Kapalua.
The network got a much higher value property than the LPGA Tour's SBS Open at Turtle Bay it had operated for five years and Hawai'i got a 10-year answer to its anxious prayers since Mercedes had wanted out at Kapalua.
Without an anchor event at Kapalua, the whole year-opening PGA Tour Hawai'i swing could have been in jeopardy since it is unlikely many pros would have wanted to come here just for the Sony Open in Hawai'i. And without one — or both — tournaments Hawai'i's key winter season tourism visibility would have taken a significant hit in January.
Ideally, a replacement might still be found to somehow keep an LPGA event at Turtle Bay. But in this economy that is looking more and more like a longshot. Given the choice of one — losing a PGA or LPGA slot — it was a no-brainer which the state would most want to hang onto.
The same kind of decision you would have thought LPGA Tour officials faced when deciding whether to re-up with SBS or hook up with J Golf, a cable channel on the rival JoongAng Media Network. Not that it is easy to fathom where the LPGA's powers that be draw their inspiration.
Instead, the LPGA not only sent SBS packing but apparently in a retributive huff. All the way into trading up into the arms of the PGA Tour — and Kapalua, it turns out.
