For LPGA commish, Annika Sorenstam endorses former Pac-12 leader Larry Scott, whose managing roles offer mixed results

Annika Sorenstam, one of the most accomplished and powerful women in golf, is making it clear about whom she wants to see become the new leader of the LPGA Tour.

Responding with a statement to an inquiry by Sports Business Journal, the World Golf Hall of Famer said she is supporting former Pac-12 commissioner and Women's Tennis Association chairman Larry Scott for the tour’s commissioner’s job that was vacated by Mollie Marcoux Samaan when she left the post in early December. The LPGA has said it is conducting a national search for her replacement, though there has been little speculation on who that person might be.

Sorenstam said in her statement that Scott, 60, has been a friend of her family for nearly 20 years and that he advised her about her brand and foundation in its early stages.

“He was a very respected leader around the world when he ran the WTA,” Sorenstam wrote to SBJ. “He did the largest women’s sponsorship deal in history and got their purses close to equal with the men. He started the Pac-12 Network when he was Commissioner there. I think he has great relationships with sponsors and the gravitas to command respect any time he enters a room. All qualities that would help in this role.”

SBJ reported that the LPGA and its search firm, Elevate Talent, sent a “candidate brief” to tour stakeholders on Tuesday. Obtained by SBJ, the brief gives a background on the LPGA as a whole as well as its affiliated tournaments, memberships and communities.

Scott’s managerial background comes with enormous successes and bitter controversy.

A former professional tennis player and native New Yorker, he became chairman and CEO of the WTA in 2003. He oversaw a five-fold increase in sponsorship money, a 250-percent increase in total revenue and a 40-percent rise in prize money. Scott successfully lobbied for equal pay for women at Wimbledon and the French Open, and he inked the then-largest sponsorship deal in women’s athletics—$88 million for six years from Sony Ericsson.

In 2009, Scott left the WTA for the Pac-12, and he served a tumultuous 12-year tenure that ended in 2021 with the Power Five league's members wringing their hands over an uncertain future.

In the most notable chapter in Scott's legacy at the helm, he persuaded the conference's schools to create their own network, begun in 2012, rather than sign lucrative deals with Fox and ESPN. Due to the changing media and cable market, the gambit did not pay off, though Scott did manage to get a side deal with ESPN for some football and men’s basketball games that earned the conference $3 billion over 12 years.

Then came the defections in July 2022—a year after Scott’s departure—of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, leading to the Pac-12 imploding. At the time of those announcements, the Los Angeles Times ran an analysis story with the headline, “Did Larry Scott kill the Pac-12?”

In fiscal year 2021, the Times reported, the Pac-12 distributed $344 million to its schools, or about half of the $680 million doled out by the Big Ten.

“They had a lot of product but they didn’t have the level of audience they needed,” Daniel Durban, director of USC’s Institute of Sports, Media and Society, told the Times. “Frankly, the Pac-12 just wasn’t that compelling.”

As a counter to the criticism Scott received, the Times wrote, “Experts point to that run of bad luck, the cyclical nature of college sports and the university presidents who signed off on Scott’s media strategy at the start. Once the network launched, campus leaders declined to spend at SEC levels and foster winning teams that would draw more viewers.

“The conference also faced an uphill battle in terms of geography and time zones, with a majority of television viewers residing in distant regions of the country.”

In attempting to sum up Scott’s time with the Pac-12, Durban said, “Larry Scott is one of the issues,” but “you can’t scapegoat just one person.”