At a time when women’s professional golf is suffering from cancelled tournaments and a dwindling band of sponsors, IMG are showing how it should be done with Ricoh’s title sponsorship of the British Open.

Thanks largely to its association with Tiger Woods, IMG has become synonymous with professional golf in recent years. Woods, for obvious reasons, may still be the agency’s current grandee client in the sport but he was by no means the first. IMG has a long association with the game and the various categories within it. A prime example is the women’s British Open, one of the four most important annual golf events on the women’s calendar and something of a jewel in the crown for the sport.

IMG’s involvement in the tournament stretches back more than 20 years, which in itself offers an indication of its longstanding commitment to golf. The agency got involved at the culmination of the 1986 tournament, won by English golf legend Laura Davies. Over twenty years on, the tournament is flourishing with live television coverage around the world and regular on-course crowds of up to 60,000 people.

It wasn’t always thus, however. “The tournament had a few sponsorship issues in the early to mid-‘80s,” explains Guy Kinnings, IMG Golf’s managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “In fact, in 1983 the event got cancelled. They started again in 1986 and the relationship with us began immediately after that championship. They came to IMG and asked if we were interested in getting involved in women’s golf. We said ‘yes’ and signed an agreement to effectively handle all the commercial side of the championships; the final side in terms of underwriting the event to make sure it happened. They obviously run the golfing side and we take care of everything else. And that’s gone on ever since.”

IMG’s modus operandi for getting involved in the women’s professional game came right from the top according to Kinnings: “[IMG founder Mark] McCormack had always fundamentally believed that the women’s game was going to be incredibly appealing because – and I guess this has been borne out – he’d always felt that it was going to get very global and that the girls do a very good job. Mark obviously saw women’s golf as appealing. We were involved in quite a few women’s golf things in the States at the time.”

IMG took charge of the 1987 tournament and immediately found what would turn out to be a new long-term title sponsor in cereal brand Weetabix, then owned by Sir Richard George. Kinnings takes up the story: “Sir Richard had been involved a little bit in women’s golf in the United States. He had a couple of deals but it was really the US arm of Weetabix. He saw us as an opportunity to take the cream of the events in England and we signed a deal with him for 1987. With Laura Davies winning the US Open [in 1987], suddenly women’s golf was getting a little higher profile in the UK.”

At the time, the Ladies’ European Tour consisted almost exclusively of European players, with little or no American involvement. That situation would remain for the first few years of IMG’s involvement, as the tournament was effectively still a regional event rather than the international one it is today. “The first five or six years we were just European Tour,” explains Kinnings. “Therefore with the LPGA restrictions we could only get two or three, up to a maximum of four, LPGA (US-based) players to come and play.”

In 1994, a major breakthrough came when the event became co-sanctioned by the LPGA, at a stroke internationalisating the tournament and, as it would turn out, taking it to a new commercial level. Alistair McKay, a director of IMG’s women’s golf division, credits Sir Richard George with much of that. “It was very much with Sir Richard’s support,” McKay says. “He was constantly looking to raise the profile of the sport, so he was very comfortable about supporting the event. And to be honest, everything we ever asked for with Richard, we got. I remember him saying to me in the mid-‘90s, ‘Alistair, as far as I’m concerned, this event is just on a graph going upwards, and as long as it goes like that, talk to me. When that stops, we’ve got problems.’ And with his support, every year it really did get better and better. In 1994, co-sanctioned, we had a lot more LPGA players coming over so it was just a bigger event on the world stage.”

By 2001 the tournament had gained Major status, making it one of the four top-tier events on the international women’s golf calendar. Kinnings refers to it as “the moment when the event took off.” He says now: “When you acquire Major status and you start going to venues like Royal Lytham & St Annes [the course where the 2009 tournament was held], and when you saw the girls play, you realised the ladies’ game was getting stronger. And let’s be honest, you had a wonderful champion in Annika Sorenstam who raised the bar, with a lot of others following her.”

Major status also meant the tournament could be played at some of Britain’s most historic courses, notably St Andrews’ iconic Old Course in 2007. “The players were suddenly able to play on this historic course. And to have your world number one [Lorena Ochoa] win at St Andrews the first time you’re there, it was amazing to be involved in that. That’s top of the pile.”

By the time of the St Andrews event in 2007, Weetabix had been replaced as title sponsor by Japanese electronics giant Ricoh. Sir Richard George had sold Weetabix to Hicks Muse in 2003 and, following a review by the new management, it decided not to continue with its sponsorship. “They just wanted to put Weetabix on television commercials etc and to move away from sponsorship,” McKay recalls. “But we had an ongoing agreement with Weetabix which they lived up to. But we agreed that we would mitigate that position if we could, so we took the time to find a new sponsor to replace them. Until that happened, Weetabix supported the whole event.”