The alliance between the LPGA Tour and the Ladies European Tour is set to grow stronger in 2024. Multiple sources tell Golf Digest that principals on both sides of the Atlantic have agreed to a plan where the top four players off next year’s LET Race to Costa Del Sol season-long points list will be awarded LPGA cards for the 2025 season. Additionally, the top 10 players will be exempt into this year’s Q-Series, the LPGA’s final stage of qualifying school. Each move also may be the first stages of an even more formal partnership moving forward.
The timing of a formal announcement about the card exchange is unknown. According to multiple sources, the two tours initially were looking at letting the LET players join the LPGA in the 2024 season based on 2023 results. At a mandatory player meeting ahead of last month’s Kroger Queen City Championship, LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan alongside LPGA player president Vicki Goetze-Ackerman, Chief Legal and IT Officer Liz Moore, and Chief Tour Business and Operations Officer Ricki Lasky, shared with LPGA members details about the plan. According to multiple attendees of the meeting, that Sept. 5 discussion was met with numerous questions as players voiced concern about adding cards for next year so close to the end of the 2023 season, when at the time there were only three full-field events left on the schedule.
The LPGA, in response to the players’ concerns, reversed course on handing the LET cards out in 2024. Both Marcoux Samaan and LET Chair Marta Figueras-Dotti emailed their player bodies on Sept. 9 explaining that cards would no longer be available for 2024.
“It was clear that the primary and immediate area of concern was the suggested introduction of LPGA Tour cards for the 2024 season,” Marcoux Samaan stated in an email to players obtained by Golf Digest. “We fully understand and appreciate the concerns raised on this point, and we recognize the importance of providing a quick response on this term. Based on your input and a discussion at the LPGA Board meeting [Sept. 5], we revisited this topic with LET leadership and have collectively agreed to amend the proposal so that LPGA Tour cards will be effective in 2025, rather than 2024.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
