CME Celebration A Season-Ender To Remember 

Photo: Michael Reaves, Getty Images

NAPLES, FLORIDA | With all the added hoopla, you almost forget what’s on the line. For starters, CME Group, through its CEO Terry Duffy, made a big announcement on Wednesday before the opening tee shots of the 2021 CME Group Tour Championship, a legitimate season-ending event that always comes the week before Thanksgiving and marks the beginning of a two-month break.

This is also a week of distractions. The first came when Duffy dropped the news that next year the purse for this championship will increase to $7 million with the winner taking home a $2 million check, the largest total payout in the women’s game. For reference, the U.S. Women’s Open paid Yuka Saso $1 million earlier this year from a total purse of $5.5 mil. And AIG will pay out $6.8 million to players in next year’s AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield.

These are the fruits of a strategy Mike Whan planted more than a decade ago. Amid a clamor from players to get purses up, the then LPGA commissioner told his board that money would flow in...