Championship Mindset

Rich Graessle, Icon Sportswire via Getty Images SPRINGFIELD, NEW JERSEY | The plan originated out of necessity. After 60 years and four title sponsors, the LPGA Championship, the second-oldest continuous women’s major behind the U.S. Women’s Open, stood at a crossroads. Wegman’s, a Northeast grocery-store chain, moved the event to Locust Hill Country Club in its home base of Rochester, New York, in 2010. The golf course was OK, but it certainly wasn’t Oak Hill. And the city was, well, Rochester, good for the once-a-decade PGA Championship but not the kind of town that would turn out for an LPGA major year after year. So in 2014, with its contract expiring and the event stuck at a $2.25 million total purse, Wegman’s exercised its option to walk away, leaving the LPGA Championship in a pickle. Previous sponsors had included Mazda and McDonald’s, and the event had run around the country – Massachusetts, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware – before its five-year stint in upstate New York. Mike Whan, four years into his turnaround efforts a...