Baffling Commissioner Response to Wie Incident

Geoff Shackelford was forwarded a letter sent to LPGA members regarding the Wie DQ. This was drafted in light of "countless feedback e-mails, blogs and phone calls to LPGA headquarters." I don't feel I had an inaccurate impression of what happened. After reading the letter, that reaffirmed what I basically copied and pasted from the AP.

There was this about Sue Witters, who apparently got a bad rap from the AP.

I addition, there has been some misunderstanding about comments made by Sue Witters, LPGA director of tournament operations and the lead official in this situation. The initial AP story that ran misquoted Sue. Acknowledging the error, the AP ran a corrected story. However, for those who only viewed the original story, it is important to know Sue’s comments in the press conference were referencing her own emotion when she had to notify Michelle; the comments were not directed at or describing Michelle. In fact, Sue represented the LPGA in a way that we can all be proud of. She handled the situation with the utmost care and attention.

Witters was the woman who was quoted as saying that her DQ of Wie was like telling a child (that believes) that there's no Santa Claus. I never read into that quote that Witters was poking fun of Wie, but apparently others did.

Still, there were no scoring officials in the scoring area. This whole mess could have been avoided had there been one there.

Like I mentioned on LPGA on GNN this week, this incident and the problems in administering drug testing to start the season are an indication that there are administrative issues with the LPGA Tour. I'm not going to start declaring crisis because that's dumb. But I am willing to say that the LPGA Tour clearly has some issues that it needs to address to avoid gaffes like this in the future.