This Thursday the Aramco Team Series of Sotogrande lands in Spain, one of the best tournaments on the Ladies European Tour, which combines individual and team formats, as well as including non-professional players. The Spanish Alexandra Armas, executive director of the LET, highlights this important event that takes place in the La Reserva course and highlights the growth that women’s golf is leading.
Armas, statemenents
“Without a doubt, I think it’s going to be one of the most exciting Aramco Team Series we’ve had so far. This is the second year that it has been held at La Reserva de Sotogrande, which is a great course, an environment where people are going to enjoy a lot in a competition with players of the highest level.
It will be on television in Spain and globally. For my part, I’m not too concerned about narrowing the gap between the LET and the LPGA. I want the LPGA to continue to grow, just like the LET, and for women’s golf in general to have many more opportunities.
The gap that really matters is the gap between men’s and women’s golf. We have to get it to be equal, to have a similar level. The gap between the LET and the LPGA doesn’t matter as much as long as we’re all growing up”
“The collaboration started in 2020 and started with a normal tour tournament: it was a pandemic year and we didn’t have many opportunities to compete. That year it was much easier to enter a country to do two events instead of one.
This is how the idea and the opportunity arose, we wanted to bet on a different format -part individual, part team- and the truth is that it was a complete success. In this way, we decided to make the ATS and take it to destinations that are important markets for Aramco.
The truth is that the collaboration is total; Aramco has been involved a lot in women’s golf with events at the highest level, there is a business part but there is also a more social part that is related to growing the sport in Saudi Arabia.
When you have an idea you never know if it will work. The truth is that from the beginning it was a good event, where the players enjoyed themselves in a format that, by introducing amateurs, is a little more complex at the beginning.
We have evolved the concept and we have been improving it, making it have more and more credibility. Within the circuit it is important to have the traditional tournaments, which is where the players compete. But we will always be open to looking for new formats, new ideas.
Getting an audience in women’s golf is not easy, you have to give it a creative twist. If we want to have an impact, we must find ways to achieve it. “The truth is our relationship with Aramco is very different from what is happening with LIV Golf and men’s golf.
We work very closely with Aramco, we have a relationship since 2020, we play in Saudi Arabia and we have an impact on society. For this reason, I think that the comparison is very difficult, because of how Aramco works with us and because of the support it gives to women’s golf.
What is most lacking is media attention; we are on TV but, even so, men’s golf has priority. We have to have more presence in the media so that the sport becomes known, to be able to bring more sponsors and thus have more television rights”