"At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur -- I always believed (and continue to believe) that the bedrock of the LPGA tour was the communities where women's golf was the biggest show of the year."

Geoff Russell, writing about the demise of the LPGA's Corning Classic and his days as an LPGA beat writer:

But the most successful events I attended, the happiest ones, the ones that consistently drew the biggest and most loyal galleries, and where the tournament officials and the players had the strongest attachment to each other, weren't the stops in the big cities. They were the ones in places like Springfield, Ill., and Youngstown, Ohio. Tallahassee, Fla., and Rochester, N.Y. Hershey, Pa. and Nashville, Tenn. Wilmington, Del., and Toledo, Ohio.

And, most especially, Corning, N.Y.

A lot of those tournaments are now gone. Meanwhile, the LPGA goes to a lot of places around the world now that it didn't when I was part of the traveling circus - countries such as France, China, Singapore, Thailand. I realize that in today's business world it's all about "going global" and "growing the brand," and it's probably exciting for the players to go to places like Evians-les-Bains and Shanghai. But -- at the risk of sounding like a dinosaur -- I always believed (and continue to believe) that the bedrock of the LPGA tour was the communities where women's golf was the biggest show of the year.

Corning was one of those places.