The KPMG Women's PGA Championship Aimed for the Stars, Then Reached Them

It all started as a passing conversation, part of a sponsor day Stacy Lewis was doing for KPMG a dozen years ago – in Seattle, of all places. The LPGA’s flagship major, the LPGA Championship, was in a bad spot and needed some big help.

If the slate ever were wiped blank, how could the event be completely reimagined? Lewis, one of the top players in the world at the time, had an idea or two, and wasn't shy about speaking up.

For starters, the purse needed to be bigger. Much bigger. The host venues had to be improved. And the championship needed a national television audience. John Veihmeyer was head of KPMG at the time. He listened to what Lewis was saying, and the wheels in his head started turning.

In 2015, the first KPMG Women’s PGA Championship was played at Westchester Country Club in New York; year later, the new championship made its way to the Pacific Northwest, and Sahalee, where it returns this week, beginning Thursday. Brooke Henderson won that second edition, outdueling Lydia Ko in a playoff.

The reimagined event was a three-way partnership that brought together KPMG, the LPGA, and the PGA of America. Those things for which Lewis had asked? It was almost as if she had found a genie in a bottle on a vacant beach. One by one, the new KPMG tournament not only checked off her wish list, but started to exceed expectations in every possible area.

“Everything I said, they did,” Lewis said Tuesday at Sahalee Country Club, where the 10^th KPMG Women’s PGA tees off on Thursday,” and they continue to do.”

Now a decade old, the championship continues to improve and thrive. Tuesday came the announcement that this week’s purse has been bumped to $10.4 million, four times the size of the purse in 2015. The winner will take home $1.56 million, one of the richest prizes in women’s golf.

But the tournament transcends money. For KMPG, the idea was to elevate more female professionals to the C-Suite across businesses everywhere. The yearly KPMG Leadership Summit has become such a powerful annual gathering that 20 other events on the LPGA schedule now host similar outings.

For the PGA of America, which, in CEO Seth Waugh’s own words, “borrows” the best LPGA players for one week a year, it is an opportunity to impact a fast-growing segment of players; 50 percent of players in today’s game are female. The game is starting to skew younger, and the KPMG has helped to diversify golf, and to introduce the game to a younger audience.

KPMG’s model has spilled over to other majors, and enticed other significant business brands to step forward and get involved – brands such as Chevron, AIG, Amundi and Ally. Purses overall on the LPGA have grown to nearly $125 million in 10 years, an increase of 125 percent.

“I don’t think you can talk about the growth to the LPGA over the last decade without saying the words ‘KPMG,’” said LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan. “Obviously, life is about partnerships, and I think bringing the PGA of America, KPMG and LPGA together, we’ve created something that has been a catalyst.”

Indeed, a rising tide has proven to lift all boats, and it continues to get better with time. Waugh took a moment on Tuesday to turn to Paul Knopp, KMPG’s Chair and CEO, to thank him and his company for stepping up and not only enhancing women’s golf, but women’s sports, in general.

“I think what you’ve really done is lit the flame for all sorts of things going on,” Waugh told Knopp. “I think you deserve a lot of credit for that. You were the first mover. You did it for all the right reasons, to do good, and you did it well for a lot of other things.”

Knopp said KMPG initially looked at its involvement with an LPGA tournament as a vehicle to address three main pillars for the company. The focus would be on the leadership summit, which has been wildly successful; to stage a great golf tournament, which KPMG has done; and to develop a scholarship program to invest in the future.

The net proceeds of the tournament are used to fund the KPMG Future Leaders Program for young women – 70 percent of whom are young women of color – to help send women to college and help to create more diversity, inclusion, and equity.

“The most important word there is equity,” Knopp said. “We really need to advance 'equity' in the game, and need inclusion to do that.”

Actress Geena Davis will host the KPMG Leadership Summit that takes place on Wednesday. Knopp said that more than 2.500 have attended the summit since it started 10 years ago. Sixty-nine percent of the attendees have been promoted in their jobs with 38 percent promoted to the C-Suite level.

“We went into this with a vision of not only elevating women in golf and in professional athletics, but certainly in business, too,” Knopp said. “That was very important to us.”

KMPG also has taken the lead in making statistics more mainstream in women’s golf, and will expand its reach in that area this week with a new program to debut called KPMG CHAMPCAST, which will provide players meaningful statistics in real time.

Currently, an LPGA player might see statistical insights to a round two days after they played. Play on Thursday, and view your stats insights on Saturday. By then, the information is often too dated to help players work on what areas of the game that need the most work. This week, players and fans alike can their track rounds and statistics in real time through CHAMPCAST, available via an app that can be downloaded.

“Shot-level data coming in in real time is a game changer,” said Marcoux Samaan. “The men have had that for a long time (with ShotLink), and now, the women can use that as a tool to enhance their game, and also for the fans. Golf fans are data nerds.”

Lewis is one of those self-described nerds, and says KPMG’s numbers and insights will be key to her in the coming months as she selects the U.S. Solheim Cup team that she will captain. For Lewis, it is hard not to be amazed by all that has transpired from that first conversation had more than a decade ago.

She looks at the KMPG Women’s PGA purse, and the tournament venues, and the summit, and she smiles. There is a great deal that makes her beam with pride.

“You know, it’s funny,” she said. “It’s amazing to watch. The players that have been on tour maybe seven or eight years, they expect this at major championships. The expect to walk out and see the big tents and see the golf course perfect.

“Fifteen years ago, that was not the case ... You got what you got, basically. So (now) I think you feel important when you walk on property. That’s something that the new players haven’t had to worry about.”