With new events and returns to favourite haunts, the future looks brighter for a tour that's had recent problems.
Future looks bright for ladies golf after 2012 plans revealed
These are not easy times for any tour seeking new sponsors and hoping to add events to the schedule, but the deepening financial gloom has hit ladies golf harder than the men.
For the LPGA Tour the situation in mid-2009 was so drastic the players felt compelled to oust the incumbent commissioner Carolyn Bivens and find different solutions to problems that included the dwindling number of tournaments, reduced funding and poor television coverage.
It meant the replacement commissioner Mike Whan had a fresh slate but an enormous task because he inherited not only a frustrated group of players, but an economic climate that only got worse not better. At the end of last season some players were beginning to whisper concerns that, domestically at least, the LPGA had failed to turn the corner.
But then, this week, came the formal announcement of the 2012 schedule and the initial response has been positive from players, fans and pundits.
This season there will be 27 tournaments on the roster, four more than in 2011, with the biggest changes seeing a return to Hawaii (for the LPGA LOTTE Championship) and Kingsmill GC (for the Kingsmill Championship), as well as a re-birth of the popular Jamie Farr Toledo Classic.
Welcome additions
Writing on Twitter, England's Karen Stupples, about to begin her 14th year on the tour, said, "Got to say that Mike Whan and rest of LPGA staff get a huge high five for the schedule. Not only for (the) returning tournaments but for the new ones (too). Hawaii and Kingsmill are very welcome additions. I love both places, Hawaii because it's Hawaii and Kingsmill because it's one of the best courses I've played in beautiful surroundings."
The LPGA had already announced, before Christmas, the acquisition of another new event, the 2012 Handa Australian Open.
Previously co-sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour event with the local Australian Ladies Professional Golf Tour, it now becomes tri-sanctioned, something which might be a sign of things to come.
The Evian Masters is now one of the sport's most glamorous tournaments, but it was once just an LET event, albeit always with higher aspirations. Those hopes have been realised and from 2013 it will become the LPGA's fifth major. Will increased sharing emerge as a pattern? Two LET tournament representatives met with the LPGA at the 2011 Ricoh Women's British Open so it may be the case.
The much better news for the LET is that the 2012 schedule it released in December shows that it, too, has new events.
The tour will return to Sweden for the first time in four years for September's Helsingborg Open, has plans for another new addition in early March and will host the inaugural ISPS Handa British Masters at The Buckinghamshire GC in August - a welcome return to England for the tour and a rare coup with the men struggling to host professional events in the country.
The flipside is that the British Masters will have a prize fund of £300,000 compared to the lowest full-field LPGA prize fund of $1.1 million (the Australian Open).
With regular LET events continuing to have funds so much lower than the co-sanctioned events it unfortunately maintains the chances a repeat of last year, when Japan's Ai Miyazato cashed one cheque on the LET all year (after winning the co-sanctioned Evian Masters) and won the money list for the entire year.
The better news is that the British Masters will take place 16-18 August, between the London Olympics and Paralympics, giving the Tour and the event a superb opportunity to showcase ladies golf when interest in sport will be greater than ever in the UK.
The Olympics also affects the LET-LPGA co-sanctioned Ricoh Women's British Open, causing it to temporarily move to 13-16 September, when it will be hosted for the first time by Royal Liverpool GC in Hoylake.
It is not the only tinkering which has been done to the LPGA schedule - last year three of the majors came in a run of just four starts (and a mere six weeks) in June and July. The Wegman's LPGA Championship will now be played in early June, one month before the U.S. Open.
The other key changes for 2012 involve a genuine prize fund for the RR Donnelly Founders Cup (last year it was played for pretend cash and charitable donations, with predictably mixed responses), improved television coverage (the tour is proactively demanding better coverage) and increased opportunity for those outside the top echelons (not only have there been fewer events in recent years, but fewer full-field ones; double jeopardy for up and coming players).
The only remaining question is how many of the 27 tournaments Yani Tseng - and maybe the precocious 16-year-old Lexi Thompson too - will win.
