Building the Road to the LPGA

Eloise Trainor developed the Epson Tour for aspiring LPGA pros

Global Golf Post    By Lisa D. Mickey   •   June 1, 2023
As the adage goes, invention is the mother of necessity. And that’s how what is now known as the Epson Tour got its start 43 years ago when a young professional, Eloise Trainor, organized her first tournament to help women pros dreaming of LPGA Tour careers prepare for the next competitive level.

Trainor had big dreams for her own game at the time, but she quickly realized there was no way to prepare competitively for the LPGA’s qualifying tournament. As an assistant club pro in Florida, her tournament preparation consisted of only two events that had no resemblance to the rigors of LPGA qualifying.

So, Trainor organized a tournament in January 1980 — right before the LPGA’s Florida qualifying event — and 53 players showed up to play at Northdale Golf & Tennis Club in Tampa.

“That was really the start of the Tampa Bay Mini Tour, which became what we know today [as the Epson Tour],” Trainor said.

Trainor discovered that she enjoyed organizing and running a professional women’s golf tournament. Her own focus also shifted.

“It had been a goal to play on the LPGA Tour, but hanging up my clubs was not hard because I realized I was not good enough,” she said.

Instead, Trainor went to work setting up more tournaments in the Tampa Bay area in 1980, averaging around 10 players per event — eventually growing the fields to 50 players.

She worked alone for two years, building tournament schedules, establishing connections with area golf clubs and attracting the likes of such young talent as future LPGA stars Rosie Jones, Meg Mallon, Tammie Green and Dottie Pepper.In a true mini-tour structure, she would charge an entry fee of $150 and hope to get 50 players. Around 90 percent of the fees went toward the tournament prize purse and the rest covered golf course expenses.

By the third year, Vikki Wainwright approached Trainor about wanting to add Tampa Bay Mini Tour players in some pro-am events she was hoping to organize. Trainor asked Wainwright to come aboard as a business partner and to help her take the fledgling tour on the road.

“We decided to turn it into a secondary tour and make it more than just a mini-tour that only played in Florida,” Trainor explained. “I wanted to give players an experience very similar to what they would have on the LPGA Tour, traveling nationally and competing around the country with guaranteed purses.”

Trainor and Wainwright turned the tour into the Futures Golf Tour. They took out a $100,000 line of bank credit to cover expenses and to pay the prize purses.

By the fourth year, they believed the tour could survive. By the 12th year, the Futures Golf Tour was on solid ground with full tournament fields of 144 players.

Players knew where to go for tournament experience. The host clubs were on board to stage the events as the tour schedule consisted of 24 to 36 tournaments a year across small-town America — spanning from Decatur, Illinois; York, Pennsylvania; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Lima, Ohio.

“We had become an entity of consequence and a tour the players could count on,” Trainor said.

They also got a show of support from top LPGA players and founders who visited a 1988 Futures Tour tournament to rally the young pros at their event in Westfield, Massachusetts. Cheering on the Futures Tour players were LPGA notables Kathy Whitworth, Betsy Rawls, Louise Suggs, Jan Stephenson and Althea Gibson.

“That said a lot for the support of our tour, as well as for the Futures Tour players who would eventually make it to the LPGA Tour,” said Trainor.

Top young women professionals continued cycling through the Futures Tour from around the world on their way to the LPGA. That included Canada’s Dawn Coe-Jones, England’s Laura Davies and Alison Nicholas, Australia’s Wendy Doolan and Karrie Webb, and Florida’s Cristie Kerr.

In more recent years, Korea’s Inbee Park, Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa, Canada’s Brooke Henderson, Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit and Americans Stacey Lewis and Lizette Salas also used the LPGA pipeline.

“They already were great players, and the tour gave them the opportunity to hone their skills in competition,” Trainor added.

Wainwright sold her half of the tour to insurance executive Zayra Calderon in 1995. Calderon helped the Futures Tour sign a deal with Southwestern Bell Corporation in 1999, and the tour was renamed the SBC Futures Tour through 2001.

After 20 years at the tour’s helm, Trainor sold her half of the tour in 2000 to Calderon, who took over as president and chief executive officer.

By that time, the tour was staging 22 to 24 tournaments annually with an average tournament purse size of $50,000. There was no debt, no dearth of incoming talent, and the Futures Golf Tour was now designated as the “official developmental tour of the LPGA,” with three automatic LPGA memberships awarded to the Futures Tour’s top three season money winners.

“It was always the goal to get LPGA cards for our players, so I was really proud in 1999 when Grace Park, Marilyn Lovander and Audra Burks became the first three players to earn automatic LPGA membership,” said Trainor, whose mission had been accomplished when she left the tour a year later.

Since that time, the tour has operated under corporate sponsorships as the Duramed Futures Tour, the Symetra Tour — and, in 2022, it signed a five-year title sponsorship as the Epson Tour. This year’s Epson Tour will offer 22 tournaments in 14 states for $4.9 million in prize money with an average purse of $223,000.

In addition, automatic LPGA Tour membership for Futures Tour players jumped from the three top season money winners awarded from 1999-2002 to five automatic LPGA Tour cards (from 2003-2007) to 10 LPGA cards (from 2008 to present).

“Getting 10 LPGA cards was phenomenal,” said Trainor. “I love it for the players, the LPGA, and just the whole evolution of it.”

Trainor believes the tour’s changes were “inevitable” with the LPGA’s acquisition of the Futures Tour in 2007. She cites a greater number of women from around the world hoping to play professional golf and needing competition to prepare for the LPGA, a role continued by today’s Epson Tour.

“Our goal from the beginning was to give players experience traveling for tournament golf, playing in different elevations, on different types of grass and in different climates, so when they reached the LPGA Tour, it wouldn’t be a shock to them,” she said. “It’s as close to being on the LPGA Tour as it can be.”

And that feeder system has worked. In more than four decades, players from the pipeline tour have won more than 440 LPGA Tour titles, including 56 major championships.

In addition, three players – Karrie Webb, Lorena Ochoa and Inbee Park – have earned LPGA Hall of Fame membership in journeys that started on the LPGA’s qualifying tour.

Trainor still visits the Epson Tour tournament each year in Albany, New York, near her home in New Lebanon, New York. She is now co-owner of eduKaytion Golf and works in golf instruction. But the tour’s founder happily makes the annual short drive to watch the newest wave of LPGA-focused young talent. It’s a quest she knows well.

And much like the young pros now passing through, Trainor learned as much from the challenging times as she did from the highlights.

“I learned to persevere and to just keep going,” she said. “It was my life, my love and my everything for 20 years, and there’s no place I’d have rather been.”

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Top: Eloise Trainor started the Tampa Bay Mini Tour in 1980 and helped transform it into what is now the Epson Tour. Photo: Courtesy Eloise Trainor.