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Being the commissioner of the LPGA has been called the hardest job in golf by someone who once occupied that chair.
Like any high-profile, top-of-the-food-chain position at a global business, the job Craig Kessler will officially assume July 15 as the tour’s 10th commissioner comes with both challenges and opportunities and, perhaps most importantly, it comes at a time ripe for the LPGA Tour to capitalize.
Golf is thriving. Women’s sports are thriving. It’s a time for the LPGA Tour to thrive.
That’s where the 39-year-old Kessler comes in.
Most recently the chief operating officer of the PGA of America with its 31,000 members and, before that, the COO of the revolutionary Topgolf, Kessler appears to be exactly the kind of young, energetic and forward-thinking leader the LPGA Tour needs.
He projects some of the enthusiasm and lean-into-it style of Mike Whan, CEO of the USGA, whose 11-year tenure as LPGA commissioner pushed the organization forward before his departure in 2021.
Things didn’t go as smoothly for Whan’s replacement, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who announced late last year she was stepping away from the job. Since then, Liz Moore has served as interim commissioner while the organization searched for the right fit at a critical time.
The game has too much momentum at the moment for it to be wasted.
“There’s not one person that has met Craig through this process that hasn’t been wowed,” said Vicki Goetze-Ackerman, the LPGA player president and board member who was part of the search committee that selected Kessler.
“We go into the interview and I meet him and I walk out and I’m like, what did I miss, like he’s too perfect, like this is just too great.”
Personality sells. It’s true for the players and its true for the leadership.
When Kessler outlined the four pillars he intends to build his leadership around during a video conference last week, the first was building trust. He also wants to build visibility for himself and the players, build the fan base and build a stable financial future.
The trust part is essential because virtually everything else flows from there.
“For the person [chosen], that would be the No. 1 thing to do,” Goetze-Ackerman said.
“The global nature of the LPGA Tour is arguably one of our most valuable assets.” – Craig Kessler
Kessler will have to earn that trust across the board but he has a head start, having worked at the game’s highest levels where he has cultivated relationships and gotten a sense of what works and what doesn’t.
He will also arrive knowing what he doesn’t know, which can be an undervalued asset. While he said he doesn’t have time for what some call a 100-day listening tour, Kessler doesn’t pretend he is arriving with all of the answers.
“One of the first things I want to do when I begin is sit down with the team and learn from their experiences. I’d like to understand what have they tried, what are the experiments they’ve run, what works and what doesn’t, and once I have a sense for the landscape, I think I’ll be able to give a much, much more detailed sort of road map for how we make sure the product continues to improve for years to come,” Kessler said.
It’s a tour that needs to solidify its existing sponsorships and find new ones. It wasn’t that long ago that the title sponsor of the big-money season-ending event was publicly complaining about players failing to show up for a pre-tournament dinner and griping about the tournament’s television coverage. One tournament on the 2025 schedule folded due to unpaid debts.
The television package is part of a bigger media deal with the PGA Tour that sometimes leaves the LPGA on a streaming service or on tape delay. With one-third of the events played outside the United States, it is more challenging to develop consistent viewing habits.
The LPGA Tour has a more international feel than the PGA Tour, both in where it plays and the diversity of its players.
“The global nature of the LPGA Tour is arguably one of our most valuable assets,” Kessler said.
Pushing players, particularly the stars, to be more visible is essential. Nelly Korda is getting there but the tour needs more players who become household names, at least with golf families.
Pushing pace-of-play initiatives is imperative. The tour has taken some steps to address the issue, which has been a persistent problem for years, but the more aggressive Kessler can convince the tour to be in that regard, the better.
Asked if he would be open to overtures from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Kessler left the door open.
“Any organization that wants to elevate our athletes in the LPGA, I can’t wait to have a discussion with folks who are willing to do it,” he said.
For Kessler, it starts officially on July 15 but, in reality, it probably started when he met for the first time with the LPGA search committee, where it seemed both sides found what they were looking for.