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Lea Michele stunning in split dress

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:22:19 GMT

Lea Michele's elegant Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards dress is an example of how best to show off legs without being "brazen", says a celebrity stylist. Phillip Bloch has dressed a number of Hollywood stars including Salma Hayek, Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry for the biggest film events in the calendar such as the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

He thinks a gown with a slit that reveals a hint of leg, such as Lea donned at this year's SAGs, is the sexiest look on the red carpet. "I love slits. It's a great way to show off legs and you don't have to have great legs to look sexy," he told WWD. "There's a return to old-fashioned Hollywood glamour and it feels like Juliet Prowse or Ginger Rogers all over again. I'm seeing a lot of slits on the red carpet, like the [Versace] gown with thigh-high slit that Lea Michele wore to the SAG Awards.

"I also love the look of an evening gown with a high-cut slit because it's not too brazen… It leaves a little bit to the imagination, not like the short skirts and hot pants everybody's wearing."Soyon An is a costume designer for American Idol. The expert has given her top tips to showing off legs to their full potential.

"One of the things I love to do to elongate the look of the leg is to use a tone-on-tone look like nude tights paired with nude-tone shoes. Another trick is wearing back-seam hosiery that looks like it runs down a stiletto heel for a really long leg," she said. Soyon also revealed the biggest leg sin, and says some lucky stars needn't worry because they already have fabulous pins.

"Women shouldn't wear shoes that cut them off at the ankle. If the shoe strap runs across the ankle, it's a no-no. But it's totally OK if it's a V-shape or asymmetrical strap because it shapes the ankle and looks sexy," she explained. "Some girls don't have to worry about their legs, like Katy Perry and Carrie Underwood, who have amazing legs."

Generation Y women losing 'female' skills such as cooking, ironing and sewing

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:56:22 GMT

Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily, reported The Courier-Mail. Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers. Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations.

Social researcher Mark McCrindle said: "Women of today tend to be busier, juggling more roles, and are quite prepared to compromise a bit of the homemade just to save some time. "They also have a lot more disposable income compared with their mums and their grandmothers so buying a cake mix or lamingtons ready-made is not a big deal."Traditional skills outside the kitchen are falling by the wayside with Gen Y women woefully behind their older counterparts, the study by McCrindle Research found. Only 23 per cent can grow a plant from a cutting when 78 per cent of older women say this is a breeze.

"We live in a throw-away culture where, rather than repair something, we will buy a new one, even if it is just a matter of darning holes or sewing on buttons," Mr McCrindle said. "As such, many women have lost these skills. If we do want something repaired, women today are more likely to take it to their local drycleaner because they are busy and can afford it."Driving manual cars is also on the decline with just 40 per cent of women under 30 possessing this skill compared to 71 per cent of older women.

The results tally with a recent survey, which found that Australian men from Gen Y were more comfortable changing a nappy than changing a tyre. But Gen Y women are taking on other skills. As well as working full or part-time, they are doing tasks previously done by men. More than 70 per cent of women under 30 say they often take out the bins, 77 per cent mow the lawn and 70 per cent claim they wash the car.

Breast implant women to meet Health Secretary Sturgeon

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:16:18 GMT

At least 1,300 Scots have the French-made Poly Implant Prothese implants. A delegation of those women is expected to call on the Scottish government to hold a public inquiry into the scandal. Ms Sturgeon said the private firms who used the implants had a moral duty to do the right thing by the women they operated on.

Use of PIP implants caused an international health scare after it emerged they were made with non-medical grade silicone. Labour's health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie will accompany the group to Holyrood where they will meet the minister later. She said ahead of the meeting: "I am pleased the health secretary has agreed to this meeting but it cannot afford to be a talking shop or box-ticking exercise. The victims of this scandal deserve answers and expect action.

"There are a plethora of questions following the scandal that remain unanswered and the victims have put forward a powerful case for a full, independent public inquiry to be held here in Scotland. "As Scotland has done on many occasions before, we have an opportunity to lead the United Kingdom in driving forward progressive reforms to help improve the rights of patients in Scotland."

Spokeswoman for the PIP campaign group, Trisha Devine, said the women needed help. She added that all the women involved were living "an absolute nightmare". Ms Devine said: "Some of the women have found out that their implants have burst inside of them and others are anxious that the same might happen to them at any moment. It feels like we've got ticking time bombs inside of us."

The NHS in Scotland did not use the PIP implants and all of the women involved in the scare had their operations carried out by private health firms. It was initially believed that up to 4,000 women in Scotland could be affected, but that figure had been reduced to about 1,300. Worried patients can have their implants removed by the NHS, but not replaced, if their private clinics refused or had gone out of business.

The PIP product was banned in 2010 when it emerged that industrial grade silicone was being used. Implants should be made from medical grade material, which has passed safety tests for use in a human body. No increased risk of toxicity had been reported, but the implants were at greater risk of rupturing.

Women's health hangs in the balance in Texas

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:28:09 GMT

In December, the federal government, as an olive branch to a recalcitrant Texas, extended funding through March for a critical program for women's health. But the state is still on a path that is to good public health what crack use is to good, clean living. Also weeks ago, Gov. Rick Perry hung up his current presidential ambitions. But he is still lying about who is to blame should the Women's Health Program (WHP) go away in Texas as a result of this fracas over, you guessed it, abortion.

Here's what Perry told the Conservative Political Action Conference recently: “President Obama has invalidated a waiver that provides health care for more than 100,000 women in my state,” he said. The president is doing this, he added, because Texas doesn't want to “subsidize abortion.”

Texas, of course, isn't subsidizing abortion. Perry's target is Planned Parenthood, a boogeyman on the presidential trail in no small part because of Perry. But the real victim here is WHP, a Medicaid program that provides health services — but not abortion — to about 125,000 low-income Texas women yearly. Planned Parenthood has been the single largest provider of WHP services in Texas.

Reacting to legislation last year that blocked “affiliates” of abortion providers from the program (substitute Planned Parenthood for “affiliates”), the Texas Health and Human Services Commission invited public comment to determine the final rule on how the legislation would work. It included the “affiliate” language in a waiver request to the feds in its application for WHP's continued funding.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rejected this. It essentially said that Medicaid doesn't pay for abortions; Planned Parenthood doesn't provide them with state or federal funds; but it does provide other non-abortion health services to women with these funds. End of story. Apparently not. To Texas, a pox is on Planned Parenthood anyway because it provides that certain other legal service, separately and with other funds.

You've read it here before. Abortion is only about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's services. Substantially, its services prevent abortions. Undercutting WHP, Planned Parenthood and state family planning funding generally will result in more unhealthy women, more abortions and more unintended births — the latter substantially on the public dime.

The “proposed” rule on “affiliates” is set to expire on Feb. 26, which means the state will take formal, final action on the rule soon. But it is signaling that the direction will be unchanged.

“We will be banning affiliates of abortion providers from the Women's Health Program. State law directs us to do that, and the Attorney General's Office reviewed the state law and found that it doesn't conflict with federal law,” said a spokeswoman.

Translated: Impasse. The state isn't blinking. The federal government will not comment on where things now stand but last said it cannot legally collaborate in penalizing Planned Parenthood. Hard to see how it could change its mind but, who knows?

The state is channeling Perry here. Hint for CPAC and the GOP ticket in November: Did you notice what befell Perry in the primary? Rejection — in humiliating fashion. From Republicans. His is not a winning message. But for Texas' low-income women, it is a losing proposition.

Women's health care too important to risk

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:25:28 GMT

Recently there have been more and more attacks on women's health care. As we have seen in light of the Komen Foundation's decisions and the criticisms of President Barack Obama's decision to protect access to affordable birth control for millions of women, these attacks are not limited to Wisconsin.

Conservative politicians in Congress are attacking the common-sense decision by the Obama administration protecting access to birth control as part of basic preventative health care for women under the Affordable Care Act. Like what we have been seeing over the past 12 months in Wisconsin, the actions by conservative politicians are doing nothing to actually help women and families. They are merely playing politics with women's health.

Instead of supporting women and families, Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans have continuously rammed through policies like defunding Planned Parenthood of family planning funds and Well Woman Program cancer care coordination funding, and trying to repeal the Healthy Youth Act.

These actions do nothing but put the well-being of women, teens, and families at risk. People of Wisconsin and across the country have had enough of the political games being played with women's lives. Let's go back to supporting women's health and stop the ideological attacks that have become all too common.

Top lipstick brands carry highest lead levels

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:18:54 GMT

Four hundred of the most popular lipsticks in the US contained trace levels of lead when tested recently, confirming similar results of earlier analyses but on a much wider scale and at higher levels than previously detected.

Five L'Oreal and Maybelline lipsticks, owned by L'Oreal USA, ranked among the top 10 most contaminated brands, according to the analysis by the Food and Drug Administration. Two Cover Girl and two NARS lipsticks also landed in top 10 slots, as did one from Stargazer. The findings exacerbate an ongoing disagreement between the FDA and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a consumer group that's been pushing the government for years to set limits for lead levels in lipsticks.

The FDA has resisted, insisting that the lead levels detected in two rounds of its own testing, including the most recent one, do not pose safety risks. But the consumer group says the FDA has no scientific basis for its conclusion.

Reports of lead in lipstick date to the 1990s, when test results from a commercial laboratory raised concerns. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 red lipsticks in 2007 and found that two-thirds of them contained lead — and that one-third of those exceeded the FDA's limit for lead in candy.
The FDA followed up with its own tests on 20 lipsticks in 2008 and then on 400 lipsticks in the most recent analysis, and found detectable levels in all the products it tested. But the FDA, which posted its latest findings online in December, said comparing lipstick to candy is unfair.

"It is not scientifically valid to equate the risk to consumers presented by lead levels in candy, a product intended for ingestion, with that associated with lead levels in lipstick, a product intended for topical use and ingested in much smaller quantities than candy," the FDA said in comments posted on its website.
The Personal Care Products Council, the trade group representing the cosmetics industry, agreed with the FDA's assessment.

Halyna Breslawec, the council's chief scientist, said her group has petitioned the agency to set a limit on the amount of lead allowed in cosmetics. The consensus on what that limit should be — 10 parts per million, Breslawec said — is higher than the levels detected by the two rounds of FDA testing and in line with proposals in Canada and Germany.

Breslawec said that lead is not intentionally added to lipstick or any other cosmetic but that many color additives approved by the FDA are mineral-based, and therefore contain trace levels of lead that is naturally found the soil, water and air.

Determining the true safety level for lead in cosmetics remains the stumbling block. The FDA's most recent analysis found the highest level of lead, 7.19 parts per million, in Maybelline's Color Sensational "Pink Petal" lipstick. But the average lead concentration in the 400 lipsticks tested was 1.11 parts per million, very close to the average from its initial survey of about two dozen lipsticks in 2008. The FDA hired a private laboratory to do the testing. The agency selected the lipsticks based on the parent company's market share, though it also included a few brands from niche markets.

"We do not consider the lead levels we found in the lipsticks to be a safety concern," the FDA said on its website. "The lead levels we found are within the limits recommended by other public health authorities for lead in cosmetics."

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has a different take on the results. The lead content in Maybelline's "Pink Petal" is more than twice as high as levels found in the previous FDA report and more than 275 times the level found in the least-contaminated brand in the recent report, the group said in a letter to the agency this month.

The least-contaminated brand, Wet & Wild Mega Mixers Lip Balm, was also the least expensive, "demonstrating that price is not an indicator of good manufacturing practices," the group said. The group cited federal research that has concluded that there's no safe level of lead exposure for children and has stressed the need to shield children and pregnant women from exposure. "Lead builds in the body over time, and lead-containing lipstick applied several times a day, every day, can add up to significant level exposure," Mark Mitchell, co-chairman of the Environmental Health Task Force for the National Medical Association, said in the group's statement. California, a trailblazer when it comes to lead regulation, has grappled with this issue.

In 2008, after the first reports of lead in lipsticks, the state attorney general's office examined whether cosmetics firms had run afoul of a California law that requires businesses to provide a reasonable warning if they knowingly expose consumers to chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive harm.
The state concluded, based on public data, that the concentration of lead in lipsticks was too low to trigger the law. Indeed, the duty to warn consumers would not arise until the lead concentration reached five parts per million, the state said.

In the FDA's study, the overwhelming majority of the lipsticks fell below that threshold. But two exceeded it, Maybelline's "Pink Petal" and L'Oreal's Colour Riche "Volcanic" lipstick. The California attorney general's office has taken no further action so far.

The 10 lipstick brands and shades that contain the most lead, according the FDA study.
1. Maybelline's Color Sensation in Pink Petal. (Lead content: 7.19 ppm)
2. L'Oreal Colour Riche in Volcanic. (Lead content: 7.00 ppm)
3. NARS Semi-Matte in Red Lizard. (Lead content: 4.93 ppm)
4. Cover Girl Queen Collection Vibrant Hues Color in Ruby Remix (Lead content: 4.92 ppm)
5. NARS Semi-Matte in Funny Face. (Lead content: 4.89)
6. L'Oreal Colour Rich in Tickled Pink. (Lead content: 4.45)
7. L'Oreal Intensely Moisturizing Lipcolor in Heroic. (Lead content: 4.41)
8. Cover Girl Continuous Color in Warm Brick. (Lead content: 4.28)
9. Maybelline Color Sensational in Mauve Me. (Lead content: 4.23)
10. Stargazer lipstick in shade ''c.'' (Lead content: 4.12)

Help Women Take the Stage

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:34:00 GMT

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has been speaking out a lot lately about subtle dynamics that hold women back from reaching senior roles in business. Her TED talk and Barnard commencement speech went viral. Lean in, she says to women, take your place at the table, seize the stage.

I never suspected she had a personal message for me, but sitting in on a recent panel on "Women as the Way Forward" that included Sandberg, I learned otherwise.

When the panel moderator, NYT's Nicholas Kristof, opened for questions from the audience, my husband whispered to me, "Go, ask a question." No, I shook my head. He insisted: "If ever there was a good time for you to make a comment, this is it." With the second nudge, I just went blank.

Why didn't I speak up? I agree wholeheartedly with everything Sheryl Sandberg says about the ways in which women are held back and hold themselves back, including not speaking up.

Defensively, I told myself, I'm tired, the happy victim of too many Davos panels and parties. I'm not going to raise my hand just to say something. Leave me alone, I said to my husband.

But my silence nagged me. Of course, when a question occurs to me, I don't hesitate to ask it. I am not shy about speaking in a large room. A professor for 23 years, first at Harvard Business School and then at INSEAD, I do this for a living. In fact, I teach business school students about how issues of image and visibility can hold back even the most technically competent — male or female — from moving up into bigger leadership roles. And here I am, not doing what my husband, as most men I know, finds the most natural and obvious thing to do: ask a question that contributes to the debate, and incidentally, positions the speaker as someone who has something to add.

When I attend a conference, I realized, my mindset is, "What will I learn?" not "What will I teach them?" This is the case for most women I know. We say, "I will speak up if I have something to say, not just for the sake of speaking." As a result, we don't plan ahead; we don't walk in with a strategy about what kind of comment to place and how to make sure it has impact.

After the panel I bumped into an old friend who leads a well-known organization. He's learned how small differences in seemingly trivial things like how fast we raise our hands lead to very different outcomes for similarly prepared and credentialed men and women. Sandberg told him, for example, that she noticed that when she says, "We only have time for one more question," most of the women put their hands down, as if their question couldn't be important enough to be the last one. So Sandberg has stopped saying that, and she is speaking to women about what she sees, encouraging them to take the stage.

I shared my experience with a colleague who, like me, applauds Sandberg's stance and agrees we must continue to raise awareness. But she also qualified what we should do about it: "Please, let's not tell women to do that awful thing men are more prone to do — and to get away with doing without being criticized. It's one thing to claim recognition for our accomplishments so that we can get important and meaningful things done; it's another to speak up just to prove that we are smart."

Sandberg herself, in the Barnard speech, says, "I know I need to believe in myself and raise my hand, because I'm sitting next to some guy and he thinks he's awesome." She then adds, "I'm not suggesting you be boastful. No one likes that in men or women." Step up, we tell women, but don't overdo it. And many don't — or at least, like me, not often enough.

So what can we do, my friend asked?

Ask questions, I said, about why women are holding back, and encourage other men do so as well. As much as we as women need to be made aware of how we play into the gender stereotypes that our society feeds us daily, men also need to see, understand, and intervene to change the dynamics that keep women from raising their hands more often and more forcefully.

For example, women are less likely than men to be sponsored for promotion. In a study of the career paths of over 700 MBA graduates of top business schools, Nancy Carter, Christine Silva, and I found that having a mentor in 2008 predicted getting promoted in 2010 — but only for men. Women's mentors were helping the women become more self-aware and strategize their careers, giving pointers, for example, about speaking up; men's mentors were placing them at the next level.

So, yes, women, absolutely, lean in, raise your hand, ask a question, but men (and senior women), let's us too ask the hard questions about what's going on and what we can do to pull the next layer of women in and up.

Women’s basketball pulls out another last-minute victory, wins 4th of last 6

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:28:39 GMT

Indiana out-rebounded Illinois 47-32 on Sunday, but the Illini women’s basketball team controlled the boards when it mattered most.

The Illini (10-16, 4-9 Big Ten) secured every rebound in the final minute of a 61-60 victory over the struggling Hoosiers (5-20, 0-12), including three crucial offensive boards that resulted in a five-point swing in Illinois’ favor.

“They had a big front line, but I told my kids we need to make contact and rebound,” Coach Jolette Law said. “At the end, they refused to lose. Rebounding is not about height, necessarily; it’s about who wants it more and who is quickest to the basket.”

As the Illini trailed 56-60, junior guard Adrienne GodBold converted a put-back while being fouled and connected on the resulting free throw to cut Indiana’s lead to one with 43 seconds left.

After junior Karisma Penn’s sixth blocked shot and on Illinois’ next possession, GodBold pulled down another offensive rebound as Illinois head coach Jolette Law called a timeout with 10.8 seconds left. Penn missed a jumper at four seconds, but Lydia McCully secured the rebound and the victory with the put-back.

“I didn’t want to lose, and the ball was in the air,” McCully said. “Someone had to go get it. We passed it and rotated the ball. KP (Penn) had a great look. I just went to the hoop, hoping for the rebound.”

The Illini squandered any momentum they may have gained in a one-point victory over No. 10 Ohio State on Thursday, letting the Hoosiers jump out to a 23-14 lead midway through the first half. But Illinois fought back and took a lead into the locker room behind 20 combined first-half points from McCully and Penn.

The duo scored Illinois’ final 13 points of the half. Penn, who stayed out of foul trouble for the second straight game, finished with 23 points, seven rebounds, six steals and six blocks while playing the whole game.

“Coach Law used to tell me how many points and how many rebounds she wanted me to have,” Penn said. “Now she just says, ‘Play a full 40 minutes.’ Now I don’t worry about going after every block. I just wanted to play smart.”While avoiding fouls herself, Penn made 12 trips to the free-throw line, converting nine of those attempts. “I was in the gym the other night for a long time,” Penn said of her free-throw shooting. “It showed today.”

McCully added 13 points, eight rebounds and four assists, and Alexis Burke, coming off her game-winning shot over the Buckeyes, chipped in 10 points. “My kids are playing together,” Law said. “They understand what we’re looking for. I think everyone is stepping up. We’re playing together as a total unit.”

With the loss, the Hoosiers remain in last place with a 12-game losing streak and no conference victories. The Illini, on the other hand, are making a late push for conference positioning after an 0-7 start to the Big Ten season, winning four of their last six games.

“I have always believed in this team,” Law said. “We’re finally putting it all together. I know if we play as one unit, we can be a very dangerous team.”

Older Women at Highest Risk for Breast Cancer Death

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:14:44 GMT

Older women with breast cancer may be at greater risk than younger women of dying from the disease, regardless of the type of tumor they have or treatment they undergo, according to a study released Tuesday.

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The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that women's age may play a larger role in risk of death from breast cancer than previously believed.

Researchers in the Netherlands analyzed the data from more than 9,000 women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer who'd been enrolled in a five-year randomized clinical trial, during which 1,043 women died.

The researchers found the risk of dying from breast cancer in women age 75 or older was about 8 percent compared with around 6 percent for women younger than 65 and in women between the age of 65 to 74.

Nearly 300,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, according to the National Cancer Institute. Older postmenopausal women are at highest risk for breast cancer recurrence.

"Because breast cancer incidence increases with increasing age, changing demographics and continuously increasing life expectancy will further enlarge the number of older women confronted with breast cancer," the researchers wrote. Larger tumors were found in older women than in younger women at the time of diagnosis, which may have contributed to their increased risk of death, the researchers noted.

"Typically, women who are older get less aggressive cancers, but this shows you can't discount aggressive diseases in older women," said Dr. Deborah Axelrod, director of clinical breast services and breast surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center.

There are many factors that may contribute to an older woman's increased risk of breast cancer death, Axelrod said. Previous studies suggested that older postmenopausal women were less likely to receive standard chemotherapy and radiation compared with younger women.

But older women were also more likely to be treated overtreated with medications -- known among physicians as polypharmacy -- which puts them at higher risk to respond poorly to treatment. But researchers said this was not a contributing factor in their findings.

The women in all age groups of the study were generally healthier, because they'd received adequate hormone therapy, according to the study methods.

"So if you're finding an increased risk in this population, what are we saying about the general population of women?" said Axelrod. The findings lend themselves to future studies on older women with breast cancer and what exactly causes higher risk of death with age, she said.

LPGA season begins with more events, optimism

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:34:14 GMT

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - A dry board in the office of LPGA Tour Commissioner Mike Whan is filled with black-and-blue, an appropriate color scheme for a tour that had been taking its lumps over the last couple of years. The colors are used for the schedule -- blue ink for those that are a work in progress, black ink for the done deals.

The board is mostly black these days. A new LPGA Tour season gets under way this week at Royal Melbourne with the Women's Australian Open, one of four additional tournaments on the 2012 schedule that have helped nudge momentum in a favorable direction.

"It's a blip if we have a nice ramp up and then ball back down," said Whan, who starts his third full year as commissioner. "It took a year to take us from negative momentum to positive momentum, and the next year to turn that positive momentum into success."He measures success by a 39 percent increase in television viewers in the United States, and by 26 percent overall. While his predecessor, Carolyn Bivens, had a reputation of alienating sponsors with a hardline approach, the LPGA was able to renew eight of the nine tournament contracts that ended in 2011.

It lost one tournament and added five others, including player favorites in Kingsmill, Va., and Toledo, Ohio. The LPGA also renewed 10 of its 11 marketing agreements. So where was the big swing in momentum?

"If there was one, I missed it," Whan said. "I couldn't tell you that I got on a plane one day and said, 'Today we crossed the bridge.' It's like any small business. If you want to turn your business around, it starts with your customers. Everybody we've added either came through or had dialogue with existing customers.
"If we want more customers, it's not because we're focusing on customers we don't have. It's going to be focusing on customers we do have. Because everybody who signs a long-term deal is going to talk to three of our customers."

Even so, behind any business model are the players. Whan is not lacking in that department. Six months into his job, Lorena Ochoa without warning walked away from golf to concentrate on her new family and burgeoning foundation. Her slot was taken by a veritable star in Yani Tseng, the 23-year-old from Taiwan who last year became the youngest golfer ever to reach five majors. "I didn't think I'd win a major. Then, I didn't think I'd win a second major. Now it's five," Tseng said. "It's just crazy."

Tseng won seven times on the LPGA Tour last year -- 12 titles around the world -- and captured the LPGA player of the year for the second straight year. Stacy Lewis was the lone American to win a major at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, while Cristie Kerr had a peculiar season in which she failed to win on the LPGA Tour but still wound up second on the money list with nine finishes in the top five. Paula Creamer remains among the most popular LPGA Tour players and hopes to rebound from nagging injury, while the freshest face on tour is Alexis Thompson, who last year at 16 became the youngest winner of an LPGA Tour event.

Still in the mix is Michelle Wie, who has been spending part of her time on tour and part of her time at Stanford, where she is expected to graduate this year before devoting more attention to the LPGA.
"Michelle at 22 ... whatever she's going to be is going to happen in the next seven or eight years," Whan said. Whan said Tseng is appealing enough through sheer skill to carry the tour, though he doesn't think that will be the case. The LPGA Tour goes all over the world now, and there are home stars on every continent, from Suzann Pettersen in Europe to Ai Miyazato in Japan.

"Yani is rewriting the record book, but the chase pack is interesting," he said. "I think we're almost past a single-player thing, at least on the LPGA. I think we're so much at a stage where there are regional stars."
The LPGA Tour season begins this week at Royal Melbourne, where just three months ago the PGA Tour staged a successful Presidents Cup that showcased one of the world's best courses. That introduced a new color to the dry-board scheme -- gray. "The commissioner's 'Hail Mary,'" Whan said. "The Australian Open was always gray." He couldn't simply sanction the event for the LPGA Tour without keeping it in line with prize money at other tournaments in the Asia Pacific region. But he landed a new title sponsor in Handa with a $1.1 million purse.

The tour spends its opening three weeks overseas in Australia, Thailand and Singapore, before starting its domestic portion of the schedule March 15 in Arizona at the LPGA Founders Cup, which a year ago featured a mock purse. Now, the players keep the money. Along with adding four tournaments, there no longer are large gaps in the schedule, which also hurt whatever momentum it had. The LPGA Tour will not go more than two weeks without playing. Plus, it has gotten away from another Bivens idea of taking a consistent time slot on Golf Channel, which meant tape delay in the evening. All the North American events will be shown live this year.

One player who won't be around for the first part of the season is 51-year-old Juli Inkster, who decided to have elbow surgery. She has been around for three decades and eight commissioners, and she likes what she sees. "He's the perfect guy for the job right now," Inkster said. "I think he's built a foundation with the sponsors and tournament owners. And the players are not complaining, which for us is unbelievable."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.