The "blank canvas" of the LPGA ANA Inspiration, which starts Thursday, has allowed tournament operator WME-IMG and title sponsor ANA to "try to re-create one of the jewels of women’s professional golf," according to Larry Bohannan of the Palm Springs DESERT SUN. In '14, the "last year of Kraft’s sponsorship of the LPGA major," the event that debuted in '72 was "practically on life support." Kraft was "letting its sponsorship of the tournament at Mission Hills Country Club expire," and sponsorship money "seemed scarce." The LPGA said that it could run the tournament in '15 "on its own, but perhaps only for that year." ANA Inspiration Tournament Dir Gabe Codding said, "People were like, I guess the event might just go away." Now in the third year of a five-year sponsorship with ANA, the tournament has "built its way back to something more than just 72 holes of golf." Codding: "The good news is when Kraft left this thing, they had stripped it down to where it was literally just the championship. So there weren’t a lot of ancillary events, there weren’t the galas. So Kraft kind of actually did us a favor by systematically dismantling these things." After years of a $2M purse and a $300,000 winner’s check, both "lagging behind the LPGA’s other majors, ANA immediately raised the purse" to $2.5M, with a pledge to go to $3M at the end of the five-year contract. That purse is $2.6M this year. Pro-ams were also "re-instituted and there was a renewed focus on parties for players and ANA customers." Codding "hopes the next step in rebuilding the event will be getting fans" to "come back" (Palm Springs DESERT SUN, 3/27).
